ED COLKER ORAL HISTORY

NINA PICK: This is Nina Pick, and today's date is the 26th of June, 2017.  I am here in Mount Kisco, New York, with Ed Colker, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Ed, do I have your permission to record this interview?

ED COLKER: Yes, you do.

NP:  Thank you, Ed.  So, I'd like to start with some questions about your family background.  Could you tell me a bit about what you know about your family and where your family came from?

EC:  What I know about the family is, they came, like millions of Jews, from the Ukraine.  And my mother and father and grandmother arrived here at the 1:00beginning of World War I.  I think my father came over on the last ship from Europe.  They settled both in Chicago and Philadelphia.  And my parents married in Philadelphia in nineteen -- perhaps '24 or '25 -- because I was born in '27, 1927.  And it was an English-speaking household, because my grandmother, who was, of course, older, did not speak English.  So, I first started speaking a lot of Yiddish in the house to her.  How much more should I tell you about the family?  They were interested in books.  They had a large bookshelf, which I loved to go near, because in those days, without -- radio was all that was available, so the public library down the road and the books at your house were very important.

NP:  Are there any of those books that you particularly remember?

EC:  There were not that many Yiddish books.  There were a few Hebrew books, because my father fancied himself more of a Hebraist.  In those days, there was no Israel, so the authors that would be available at that World War I and post period would be Ahad Ha'am and maybe the writings of Jabotinsky.  But my mother was a fervent Yiddishist, so by about the age of eight, I was enrolled in the Workmen's Circle elementary school -- the shule [secular Yiddish school] -- in Philadelphia.  I can show you a picture of that, if you'd like to see it.

NP:  Sure.

EC:  These were the early days.  And I continued to speak both Yiddish and English in the house.  This is my composition book when I was eight years old, nine years old.  In Yiddish.  And this was our Philadelphia school.  And as 3:00you can see, in those days, it was quite a group of kids that could (UNCLEAR).

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

EC:  I'm sitting here next to my friend Shikl Fishman -- Joshua Fishman, the great Yiddishist and social linguist, with whom I grew up a few doors away, and whose sister, Rokhl Fishman, became the prominent American Israeli poet when she emigrated.  So, it was a nice fraternity of Yiddish speakers in the Workmen's Circle school.  And also at that time when -- became very aware of the social justice impacts.  Should I go on a little bit about Yiddish literature at the time with a Yiddish poem?

NP:  Sure.

EC:  The first poem I remember at Yiddish school -- [BREAK IN RECORDING] And it was called "Di noyt [The need]."  "In bruklin, in a shtibl, on vent un on a dakh, gevoynt an orem man, mit kinderlekh a sakh -- In Brooklyn in a house, without walls and a roof, a poor man lived, with many children."  "But oykh mit zey gevoynt, di altink groye noyt -- But also living with them in the house was the old, gray need: poverty."  So, that was part of the very early sensibility that many of the Jewish population who read the "Forward."  [BREAK IN RECORDING] When I was ten years old, my mother took me to a convention of the Workmen's Circle where Abe Cahan, the editor of the "Forward," came to Philadelphia in the arena, which held ten thousand people.  It was about half filled.  But that wouldn't happen today, unfortunately.  Probably the major readers of Yiddish today are Russian émigrés, I believe.

NP:  Okay.  Thank you.

EC:  That's the early part.

NP:  And so, what part of the city of Philadelphia did you grow up in?

EC:  North Philadelphia.  North Philadelphia, which at that time was a bit of a reach, because South Philadelphia, where the movie "Rocky" was shown, was the old ethnic neighborhood -- also an old Yiddish neighborhood, as well.  But I was in North Philadelphia by that time, which was now the '30s -- '30s and the early '40s.  And there were several Yiddish schools.  And also the Sholem Aleichem schools, which were more bent toward a Zionist interest.  So, there was Yiddish activity.

NP:  Could you describe the home that you grew up in?

EC:  It was an interesting Jewish home in that there were mild nuances.  My grandmother was, of course, very orthodox in her beliefs.  My father was, but 6:00he was also devoted to Hebrew and the dream of Israel -- as a young man in Russia, he was part of that dreamer group.  My mother, on the other hand, was an immediate garment worker and a unionist and very much a Yiddishist, not necessarily a Zionist.  So, the emphasis, because of the language we all three shared, was more on Yiddish.  And that's why my --- what attracted me to the Yiddish school environment -- that it was so important to me and to her.  And I stayed with that environment till age seventeen on weekends.  And there was a lot of social justice sensibility, as I keep reminding.  I can see myself at age ten, standing on the corner with a red arm band, when I made the first -- gathering money for the Yiddish orphans in Poland, the Jewish orphans in the 7:00Medem Sanitorium in Poland, standing on the corner of my little street.  So, that was a kind of emphasis that was put on it at that earlier age.  I can talk to you later about my teen years, but I'll wait for your next question.

NP:  So, what traditions did your family have that were important in the family?

EC:  Well, they had the usual Yiddish -- Jewish traditions.  I was bar mitzvahed.  We had the seders.  The difference was, again, the emphasis was on Yiddish culture.  But again, the Yiddish schools were all -- all honored Hanukkah and they honored -- music -- and I sang in the Jewish choirs.  And in my teen years, they had a constant amalgam between New York and Philadelphia, so we had the massive Workmen's Circle choirs, which as teenagers we participated in.

NP:  Thank you.  Could you tell me a bit about -- do you have any particular 8:00story or memory from your experience at the Workmen's Circle?

EC:  Too many.  I'll show you a few, having mentioned one or two.  Too many, because they were very rich experiences, both summer and winter.  For example, the theater groups -- we had -- we did Yiddish theater at a large auditorium in central Philadelphia.  And at one point, we performed in front of two or three thousand people in town hall.  So, it was a very active cultural life.  Also, music -- as I mentioned the choir earlier.

NP:  What plays did you perform?

EC:  Well, I played many roles.  In some cases, I was a Jewish father-in-law; 9:00in other cases I was a drunken Russian student.  In "Shver tsu zayn a yid [It's hard to be a Jew]," we did a piece of that, in which we had to sing the international academic "Gaudeamus Igitur" hymn -- which was quite different, because they would do it at Princeton or Yale.  And summers, the Workmen's Circle group had a beautiful camp outside of Philadelphia, where there were interesting people.  And there again, the social justice issue, where I remember, one or two of the young men left to sign up for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.  Not many people in the Yiddish world did that or knew about it.  Also, there were interesting people that came out of that world.  Herman Silverman, who I haven't recently met, but now in his old age -- as a younger man, he and James Michener, the author, founded the Michener 10:00Museum of American Art in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  So that there are all kinds of spinoffs.  And then, one of my old close friends -- one of my great teachers, of course, in the high school, was Lerer [Teacher] Bressler.  His son, Marvin Bressler -- Martin Bressler -- later became the chairman of sociology at Princeton.  And two women, Brooke Shields and Michelle Obama, have cited him as being one of their most sympathetic and kind mentors, since they felt somewhat out of place at Princeton.  So, the idea of being out of place but being proud of it -- "proud" may not be the right word, at least not -- not apologizing for it was part of the ethos.  My mother, when I was eleven years 11:00old -- at the camp -- again, Camp Hofnung -- insisted I shake hands with Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate for president, of course.  And also, since you asked me about the Workmen's Circle days, too -- I have it in another folder, but -- oh, here it is.  The Friends of the Secular Yiddish Schools collection at Stanford asked for some of the pieces of what I had in the archive.  And the textbooks we had -- for example, was the story of Eugene Debs, put out by -- again, by the Workmen's Circle.  When I grew up, my mother had a beautiful portrait of Eugene Debs on the sideboard, as if he was my grandfather (laughs) or as if he was a patriarch of the family.  (pauses) This, of course, is what 12:00he looked like.  And I also saved, from my mother's archive, the "Forward" -- newspaper photographs of Debs receiving the nomination for president while he was still in prison.  I think he received two million votes -- while he was still in prison as a pacifist.  And here he was greeted in Chicago with flowers, which my mother remembers -- also in the "Jewish Daily Forward."  And I wanted to say one more word about the educational texts.  In addition to those pieces -- well, I can't lay my hands on it now --

NP:  We can come back to that --

EC:  If we could come back --

NP:  -- if you'd like, at the end.  Yeah.  Great.  Okay.  And you had -- to return to what you had said about, okay, we could come back and talk a little 13:00bit about your teenage years --

EC:  Yes.

NP:  -- how would you describe those years for you?

EC:  Teenage years -- by that time, we were moving toward World War I and into World War I [sic].  And there were still those of us that were still actively going to the Yiddish high school -- in this case, the Workmen's Circle high school.  So, we put out our own hectograph newspaper -- in those days, we didn't have a mimeograph machine yet.  So, it was called the ILPYC -- Yud Lamed Peretz Yugnt Club -- (laughs) the I.L. Peretz Youth Club.  And of course, being the artist, I illustrated it, of course.  And it had in it essays that we wrote about Sholem Aleichem or about Peretz.  And of course, they're all faded now, because they weren't mimeographed properly.  But what I think was fun was, Fishman and I actually did a Yiddish crossword puzzle, (laughs) which -- that 14:00was in 1944, so we were about sixteen, maybe, at the time.  Now, a more sophisticated issue we did, also about that time, was for the poet Mani Leib, who came to Philadelphia and was having an important anniversary.  This is the actual original copy -- and I'll show you a better image of it -- a portrait of him which I did for the cover.

NP:  Wow.

EC:  And then it was an appreciation.  So what we did in those days, we actually had symposia in which the poets were come from New York -- men, women.  It was also in the same auditorium where the theater would take place downtown.  And there was one where we didn't feel we were missing out on anything at all -- quite the contrary.  It was in the classes -- I was thinking about it the other day -- I figured you'd ask me, What was the curriculum 15:00like?  And it was in those classes as a teenager that Paul Simon, who was one of our teachers, fluent in French, and giving us a history of philosophy of the world -- I don't think -- I wasn't getting that in high school yet.  I was sixteen, seventeen.  He introduced me to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  He introduced me to Auguste Blanqui.  Where -- I didn't know any of these folks.  I didn't get them in high school, either.  Except much later -- in college, actually.  So, it was a very rich education, and an unusual one for the time.  And what they were most proud of is that people like the folks I mentioned to you that graduated -- Silverman, Bressler -- Carl Kaysen, who I'm told was a graduate, and wrote the nuclear Test Ban Treaty -- I mean, these are all people that came out of a wellspring of Yiddish culture.  And I don't know if I should interject this, but I had another thought in thinking about your coming today.  I spent 16:00much time in Israel, as well, which we can -- maybe we'll talk about later.  Where -- Itzik Manger said when he got there, he feels he's a fremder in a fremd land -- he felt he was a stranger in a strange land, because Yiddish was not being emphasized, with the Israeli view that perhaps it was the language of the galut, the exile.  But what I regret is that I think the notion of Yiddish culture just being one of newspapers, writing, teaching, singing, and music ignores the fact that the culture of the shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community], this culture of the family, the culture of the community, is really as much a part of the entire wave of Jewish identity which swept over into this country from the Bund in Russia to become the head of the unions in this country.  What kept Franklin Roosevelt elected time after time 17:00were union leaders.  Dubinsky, the head of the International Garment Workers' Union; Potofsky, the head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union; Alex Rose, the head of the Cap and Millinery Workers' Union.  These were expressions of a wave of attitude.  I don't think I could even talk about this too well to my own grandson.  I don't think he would understand it.  And that troubles me.  The fact that, of course -- in one of my essays on Sholem Aleichem, I quote one of the critics who said that Sholem -- a story that -- a man walked up to Sholem Aleichem personally one day -- in Europe, they're still in Europe -- and said to him -- he kissed his hand and said, "Thank you, because you have made our 18:00bitterness more sweet."  But that implies only a treyst, a solace, and I'm saying it's much more than a solace.  The business of Jewish food and Jewish tradition.  I take great pleasure in the fact -- when my daughter says to me about attitude and active social behavior or political behavior -- and she's not fluent in Yiddish -- and she says to me simply, "That's not Jewish."  Now that, to me, encapsulates a very large world -- which didn't just come from the Torah.  That's the point I'm making.  I love the Torah studies and I enjoy doing it, but it also came from another shaping, which grew out of the ethos, even, of the town, of the neighbor.  "Es iz a shande [It's a disgrace]."  I was talking to one of my printers years ago, and he -- I said something about, "We might cheat on this proof and maybe fudge the color a little bit."  And he 19:00said to me, "Es past nisht [It's not becoming]."  And he was not Yiddish-speaking.  (laughter) But it meant that he had heard his mother and father say often, It is not proper.  It is not appropriate.  These are ethical notes, which were heard around the table -- which were heard around the kitchen table, more often.  So, to me, there's a whole panoply -- which, of course, the Book Center and its translators and its making availability of the great stories -- and more recently, my own research on women Yiddish poets, Jewish poets.  I spoke to Kathryn Hellerstein the other day.  Her new book from Stanford is five hundred years of women Yiddish poets.  So, there's a lot to be gleaned from all of that.  And that gleaning did not just come -- I guess the point I'm making -- it didn't just come from the holy book; it came from the reading books, and 20:00it also came from those who couldn't read.  But we're wrapped into the Yiddish -- the "Bintel Brief" -- when Abe Cahan would answer letters in the Yiddish "Forward."  It wasn't just an advice to the lovelorn; it was, again, modes of attitude and behavior.  I don't want to go on too long, so --

NP:  Well, that's a great segue --

EC:  Edit it out.

NP:  (laughs) I think that was a great segue into the next section.  So, we've been talking a bit about your background, your childhood, your education.  I know today you're an artist, a printmaker, a poet.  And so, I'd like to turn to a discussion of how you got where you are today.  So, you described a bit about this already -- how you grew up speaking Yiddish and that your mother was a Yiddishist and you were speaking Yiddish at school.  So, did you have particular mentors that encouraged your work?

EC:  In the arts?

NP:  Work in Yiddish.

EC:  Work in Yiddish (UNCLEAR)?

NP:  Yeah.  Um-hm.

EC:  My Yiddish teachers were all superb.  As I mentioned, Paul Simon, who was a Francophile, and deep into philosophy.  [Gedalia Bressler?].  Hersh Novak, my first teacher -- whose portrait hangs, I think, in the -- with a group of teachers at the Yiddish Book Center.  On my first visit, I spotted it.  And the women teachers -- [Riva Bleshman?] and (UNCLEAR) Shapiro.  I mean, they were wonderful teachers.  So, they were all ment-- I learned a lot from the-- [Shin Daled Zinger?], who was a critic -- I learned a lot about editing from him.  And the poets that came to visit.  I met Reyzen, I met Mani Leib.  Wonderful writers.  And the singers: Sidor Belarsky, who was a popular, semi-celebrity singer in Jewish circles.  He would always sing at our 22:00concerts.  And when I was on the West Coast in the '50s, I was invited to a Sunday brunch by an Asian family, friends from New York -- Japanese Americans -- and they went around the tab-- the circle, and apparently, their custom is, on Sunday brunch, everyone had to recite a poem or sing a song.  I didn't have any poems or song that came to mind (laughs) -- except, unfortunately, a song that Belarsky used to sing (laughs) called "The Miller's Tears."  It's a sort of sad Yiddish song, but I thought they'd appreciate it, since they were an agricultural people -- the Japanese folks around me -- who unfortunately had been detained during World War II.  So, I sang 'em a little bit of "Dem milners trern -- The Miller's Tears."  It's a long song.  I won't give you the whole song, except he says toward the end, (singing) "Di reder dreyen zikh -- The 23:00wheels keep turning -- di yorn geyen zikh -- the years keep going -- un oykh mit zey geyt oys der yid -- and also with the years, the Jew -- I am going, as well."  The first part of the song is a lament that they want to drive him out of town; I suppose the mill is no longer needed.  Well, anyway, they loved it, because it resonated with them as what a Japanese song would be -- what a Kyoto song would be, what a Korean song would be.  So, it was quite nice.  So, these echoes -- these little echoes are always a nice reminder that one carries many -- many, many sources -- which came from what you asked me in terms of who and how did they give it to you.  The singing -- the combined choirs of Philadelphia and New York would sing -- you know, Madison Square Garden had a big rally in the '40s for world peace or for Israel, or for the refugees.  And 24:00they were directed by Lazar Weiner.  When I came to Purchase College as a dean, I was introduced to the music dean, Yehudi Wyner.  In his office I spotted a little poster that said, "Three Generations of Wyners" -- Yehudi, his father, and his wife -- Yehudi's wife, Susan Davenny, a soprano.  So, I surprised him by saying, "I know your father, Lazar Weiner.  I sang under him at Madison Square Garden and at the town hall in Philadelphia."  And he, of course, had a long career as a professor at Yale and as a composer.  So, we spoke a little Yiddish to each other.  And we surprised the president of the college when he came and had a little meeting in Yehudi's piano studio by throwing some Yiddish at him.  But he was a smart guy -- Hank Dullea, who later went to Cornell.  He said, "I know some Yiddish."  Broadway had seeped (laughs) -- Broadway lingo, language had seeped into him.  So, Broadway has had its little role to play, 25:00too, I should note -- "Fiddler on the Roof," most notably.

NP:  So, what inspired you to become an artist?

EC:  Oh, I was -- like my wife, we were artists as -- this high.  I think it may be the same with dancers or gymnasts.  My granddaughter climbs to the top of the rope and won't come down, and she's age six.  So, she'll probably be a dancer or a gymnast, there's no question about it.  She climbs trees, can't sit still.  In our case, we were drawing very early.  And during the old Depression days, when my mother would send my father's shirts out to be laundered, they'd come back with a -- 'cause they'd have to be starched if he's going to work -- they had a cardboard in it, so all the kids would take out the cardboards and we'd draw.  That was our drawing tablet.  So, we -- I drew very young.  And Philadelphia was a great city to grow up in.  If you were a musician or an artist, the elementary school would send you downtown after school to a special school, for after-school.  That's why in Philadelphia, 26:00people like Leonard Bernstein, William Kapell, the dancer Judith Jamison -- it was a city where if you showed any talent in the public school, they would move you to after-school work.  It was small enough -- unlike New York, perhaps, or Chicago, that's so big -- that the board of education could afford to do that.  So, we got extra training.  And then, when -- if you showed some talent, you would be awarded a scholarship, which I was -- or a grant to go to any one of the four major arts schools in Philadelphia -- and seventy-six colleges.  It was a very, very higher-educated town in those days.  So, I went on to the Philadelphia Museum School.  And that was in the early '40s -- 1944 -- after I graduated high school.  But by that time, I was very active in high school arts -- I took it as art majors.  Of course, we had good high schools.  We were 27:00also getting "Hamlet" soliloquys and we were also getting college-level English and French, which I don't know if they give today.  So, it was very easy.  I kept refining my work as an artist -- until '44, when I went into the service.  And so, I had almost two years of arts college -- of art school.  And didn't come back till, I guess, about two years later -- came back in '46 or '47 -- late '46. 

NP:  So -- and what happened when you went into the service?

EC:  Oh, I had marvelous -- marvelous -- they were eye-opening.  I had never been away from home.  My experiences with the Jewish camps was only as a weekend visitor; I was never a camper.  Only child, a little overprotected.  28:00So, my first experience from home was in the Eighty-Eighth Infantry in Italy.  And it was remarkable in many ways.  The usual war -- postwar stuff and partial war stuff.  We had a lot of difficulty with what is now going on in the world.  We were competing with Tito's Yugoslavian guerillas for the disputed territories of northern Italy.  So, we had some close shaves, but not as bad as the earlier combat.  But I thought about that experience, which was remarkable -- in terms of the Jewish angle.  It was the first time I met the Hebrew Brigade from Israel.  Because the British controlled our area in northern Italy, where I was.  So, I met with them and spoke with them.  It was interesting people.  And we also had the first seder up there for the Jews that 29:00came out of the caves in northern Italy.  Their skin was as yellow as this folder, because they had never been out -- they hadn't seen the sunlight for three years.  They had been in the caves and -- would sneak in -- people would sneak in and out to kind of protect them.  Italy wasn't, as you know, not quite as bad as Poland and Germany and the northern countries.  So, that was an experience, to meet them and see them.  And one experience I remember still, which I thought about when I was thinking about your asking me something about the Army years -- I was -- I did something and was -- got a commendation, and I was sent on a rest tour.  Had a rest.  This was especially for infantry divisions.  I was given a rest tour to Switzerland.  And I was in a jewelry shop in Zurich.  I wanted to send a wristwatch home for my mother.  And I looked out the store window, and this older Jewish man with a hat and a white 30:00beard -- and maybe peyes [sidelocks], I couldn't quite tell -- was pacing back and forth very uncomfortably in front of the window.  He's hesitating coming into the shop.  And then, he took a chance when he saw me.  I don't how (laughs) -- I wasn't wearing any insig-- I was wearing my stripes and I was wearing my Eighty-Eight Division patch, and he came in, took a chance, asked me in Yiddish if I spoke Yiddish, and I said yes.  And I asked him, "How did you get here?"  And then, of course, as you may have heard -- have read and known, he said, "It wasn't easy.  They didn't want us here.  We had to bribe and steal our way over and pay for it.  But we got across, from Austria or from Poland."  And he was glad to touch for a moment, shake hands for a moment, with another Jew -- especially in uniform.  The storekeepers weren't that happy, but they weren't gonna say anything to me -- I'm buying a watch and I'm a GI, right?  So, I remember that.  I was only eighteen at the time.  Later, of 31:00course, I heard more stories.  Crazy -- crazier stories, braver stories, of people that jumped ship on the way from Austria -- over the side, to get into Vienna or Italy -- get out of Vienna into -- or out of Czechoslovakia into Vienna.  And so, it was an eye-opener for me.  But of course, as an artist, it was another eye-opener, because we had to set up a rifle range in Venice.  So, I was part of the headquarters company, so I set up the rifle range in Venice, which -- it got me -- got a chance for me to see the great treasures of art and the great cathedrals.  And then, we cleaned up after seven days of keeping our weapons going, and we ordered everybody to take our bayonets and clean up the cartridges.  And my bayonet kept hitting stones.  Finally opened up the stones, and there were Jewish gravestones.  These were the gravestones that 32:00Napoleon had used underneath his cannon to keep them from shifting in the mud -- even though later he was kind enough to liberate the Jews.  But the Jewish ghetto was on Lido.  This is where I set up the rifle range.  They put us out there because that's the swamp -- at the end of the island.  So, I was very upset by that.  I spoke to my commanding officer, my captain, who was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner from Carthage, Mississippi.  Chicken farmer.  Terrific guy.  I said, "What am I gonna do about -- I hate seeing that."  He said, "They know about it.  It'll be taken care of after the war.  You'll see."  Well, how many years later -- '44, '45 -- I went back with my wife, Elaine, to show her that spot, but now Lido is the international film festival, and that swamp at the end with the stones had now been recovered.  33:00There's a small Catholic cemetery and a small Jewish cemetery that's been restored with the restorations of the old ghetto in Venice inwardly.  So, these were part of the interesting experiences that -- being Jewish followed me (laughs) -- or being Yiddish followed me -- that made my trip in Europe interesting.  So, that was until I came back.  And then, I went back into the art school in '46, '47, graduated in '49.  Started teaching right away.  They asked me to teach life drawing from a model, 'cause I was pretty good at that.  So, I taught advanced drawing.  And then kept -- then a group of us took a studio -- and you know how it is -- when you're young, you think -- a studio with a bunch of guys and gals that -- we worked together, painted together, and printed together.  Should I go on about the art?  Or --

NP:  Well, I'd love to hear -- can you tell me -- has there been a particular artist or work of art that was especially inspiring to you?

EC:  That would be a very, very long story.  Because at that point (pauses) -- the only artist of Jewish origin, or -- I shouldn't say "the only" -- the artist of Jewish origin that I always loved -- but not because they were Jewish, but because of their power and their interest, was Chagall, of course.  I missed him by about ten minutes when I was at Saint-Paul-de-Vence in France during the '60s.  I missed him by six minutes.  He came to buy a newspaper, but (laughs) he left before I -- I did meet Jacques Lipchitz, though, who I enjoyed very much.  I thought Lipchitz -- terrific sculptor.  And he had a studio up here 35:00in Hastings.  But I met him when he came to Philadelphia when I was teaching.  And of course, Modigliani, whom I never met, but whose work was extraordinary -- partly Jewish, if not fully Jewish.  Chaim Soutine, whose work I liked.  So, there was a whole group of artists who I enjoyed very much.  As far as my direct influence, by the time I was in the '50s, I was directly influenced by the abstract expressionist artists of the time.  Whether they were Jewish or not was not so much relevant.  But interestingly enough, the two major critics who determined the course of that movement in the '50s and '60s were Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg -- happened to be Jewish.  So, there we go again with the influence of Jewish distinction in many areas.  But I read their work, 36:00and I -- of course, they influenced me.  And Meyer Schapiro, too, the great critic at Columbia -- fantastic historian.  So, these were three of my great -- folks that know -- my readers, I -- my readings -- which, of course, I share with all of my students -- Schapiro, Greenberg, and Rosenberg.  Sounds like a law firm, a Jewish law firm.

NP:  (laughs) Could you tell me a story about a particularly meaningful project that you've worked on?

EC:  Well, the major change for me -- the big, heroic change --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

EC:  My wife, Elaine, was teaching painting at Ben Gurion University.  And before we went over, my mother had copies of "Di goldene keyt," the magazine that Sutzkever had published in Israel.  So, while Elaine was teaching painting at Ben Gurion University, I was in the library.  And I found that Chagall had 37:00done a sixtieth anniversary portfolio for Sutzkever.  Well, I was back -- I had met Berl -- Barney Zumoff -- do you know Zumoff's work at all?  Is he on your list, by the way?  I'm surprised if he wouldn't be.  Berl Zumoff is a former vice president of the "Forward."  He's a great translator of Yiddish poetry.  He's done maybe twenty books, most recently on women poets.  And he's an MD -- endocrinologist --- was, I guess, a vice president or president of the "Forward" at one -- of the Workmen's Circle at one time.  He's now retired.  But he had written an anthology of poems by Sutzkever.  So, I called him and told him about my seeing Chagall's sixtieth anniversary piece.  I said, "Sutzkever is getting older, and I'd like to do something with his poetry.  Can I use your translations?"  And he said yes.  And I said, "Also" -- I think at that time, 38:00my wife was going over -- or coming back for a second tour -- they invited her and me to team-teach at Kaye College in Be'er Sheva.  He said, "Well, let me give you Sutzkever's address.  So, I called him, we met, and in 2004, when I came back, I decided to do a tribute to Sutzkever's ninetieth birthday -- bilingually, in Yiddish and in English.  So, this is the portfolio.  And the Yiddish Book Center has a copy.  I called it "Beneath the Trees."  This is a photograph my wife took of Sutzkever and me in his apartment.  I'll tell you a little bit more about that later.  And I won't go through the whole book, but I'll show you the spread to give you some flavor.  In one of the poems -- the 39:00first poem -- he talks about -- the lead plates from the Rom Press.  The Rom Press was a press that printed Bibles in Poland.  And remember, Sutzkever, after leaving the Vilna Ghetto, escaped into the woods to fight with the Polish -- along with the Polish partisans.  So here, the plan was to raid the press, steal all the lead type, and with hand molds, compose bullets out of it.  So, the type -- which was set by the poet Gitl Viswanath, if you know her work -- young poet -- she set the type for me in Yiddish.  In this case, I believe I 40:00did my own translation.  The rest of the book is with Barney Zumoff's translations.  I'll just read you the last note, because what he says here -- "The words taken and melted in lead, and their voices heard in our hearts."  What he's lamenting, of course, is what any poet would lament: that we have to take language -- in this case, lead -- and sadly enough, sometimes books -- and destroy it for the cause of, in this case, righteousness, redemption, whatever.  Liberation, in this case.  The same feelings that Paul Celan had.  And I've always tried to include Jewish survivors.  Edmond Jabès, with whom I did -- for whom I did a large book with Rosmarie Waldrop.  He was exiled from 41:00Egypt by Nasser.  So, the turning point for me was, in a sense, my -- and the longest work for me was this big book.  And subsequently, I've done two more books, with Mel Konner this time as translator.  Konner is an MD and an anthropologist, professor at Emory University.  And the one is called "Poems from Africa" --- uh, "Elephants by Night."  And the other is -- the more recent one -- is "Poems from Africa II" --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

EC:  -- which again, is not bilingual, but contains more poems -- including one from Sutzkever -- two from Sutzkever, actually.  And as a foreword to the book, I put in the photo again that Elaine had taken with the sketch of Sutzkever by 42:00Chagall up in the upper corner -- the drawing that Chagall gave him -- he was in touch with him always -- up in the upper corner.  It was a little apartment, surrounded by art, of course.  And in his letter to me, which I reproduced -- the original, first letter -- after which we had many conversations by phone.  I just said in here that the first of several subsequent letters to the artist, dated May 2002, expresses the poet's thanks for the original drawings to his texts and, in addition, to his blessing.  He also grants permission to publish the portfolio.  He adds that throughout his entire life, he has been a friend of painters.  He loved to sketch; he's described a dozen books to me with little sketches of himself in the front -- and he offers greetings to my wife and to Berl Zumoff.  So, in Yiddish, it reads very nicely: "Tayerer [Dear]" -- 43:00he called me Itzik, not Edward or Ed -- as he called Itzik Manger -- 'cause my Hebrew name is Yitzhak, of course.  "Mayn tayerer itzik, a dank far dir originele tseykhenungen tsu mayne lider.  Tsuzamen mit mayn brokhe, gib ikh aykh" -- (pauses) oh, yeah, he gives me -- "a brokhe aroystsugebn" -- he gives me a blessing to publish the book.  (Pauses) "Mayn gants lebn bin ikh a frant mit malers" -- my whole life, I've been a friend with painters.  "Ayn grus ayer 44:00froy un berl zumof [A greeting to your wife and Berl Zumoff]."  So, that was -- to answer your question simply, he really -- and of course I met with him later, at the end, again, when he was close to death, but when I met him at the sanitarium -- and here had had cancer of the face -- they had already cut out all of his nose, very painful.  As I walked in with Elaine and we sat down with him at the nursing home, the first thing he said to me was, "Vos makht ir [How are you]?"  I didn't even have a chance to ask him how he's doing.  He asked me, "Vos makht ir?"  That's part of the ethic I spoke about ten minutes ago.  That didn't come from a book; that came from a Jewish culture.  That's what you do.  Just to be amusing for a minute -- just to digress -- (when you came in and asked -- and offered me -- we offered each other a drink -- I have some apple cider over there -- the worst thing my grandmother would say to me -- when she visited some stranger or some neighbors, she'd come home and say, "M'hot nisht gegebn afile a gloz kalte vaser."  In other words, "They didn't even 45:00offer me a cold drink."  (laughs) That was the worst sin.  That was a cultural sin.  That wasn't Miss Manners, you know?  That was it.  So, I was very touched that he said to me -- in his pain, before I could even shake hands with him -- "Vos makht ir?"  How am I?  Of course, he also asked me how Ruth Wisse was doing -- who was his great, you know, friend and champion.  I talked to him a little bit about what I knew -- what she was doing at the time.  And that was the last time I met with him.  I had spoken to him on the phone several times.  So, that turning point -- plus the two books, which are at the Yiddish Book Center -- "Elephants by Night: Poems from Africa," "Poems from Africa II," and "Beneath the Trees."  They're there, if anybody wants to see them.  And as I said, Mel Konner at Emory University still sends me pieces from his basic 46:00manuscript of "Elephants by Night."  So, I've included another page of those poems in the new edition of twenty-three poets, the one I've just done.  But there might be enough on that score.  But that was really a turning movement which got me, again, excited about Yiddish poetry.  And of course, along the way, I met so many interesting people that share that interest.

NP:  Thank you.  What projects are you currently working on?

EC:  Matisse used to say, "The one I like best is the one I just finished."  (laughs) Well --

NP:  Could you tell me a little bit about that one?

EC:  The one I just concluded was called "Twenty-three Poems by Twenty-two Poets [sic]."  There are three poems by Sutzkever in there, one translated by 47:00Zumoff and two by Mel Konner.  So, what I've been doing is -- of course, we're trying to place those around the country.  Most of my work goes through my agents, who are a couple -- a wonderful couple who, I think, are retired professors or retired teachers, and they visit the university libraries (UNCLEAR).  So that -- during this last few months, as I mentioned to you earlier, the Vassar College library, the special collections up here in Poughkeepsie, they have literary papers: Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, many others.  The director there is interested in fine press works.  So, they're taking all of the things I showed you -- all of the work -- plus all of the work from 1960 to 2016.  So, what I've been trying to 48:00do -- since he also found, when he went through the internet, that no one place has a full archive of what I've done and what my wife has done in her own small editions of women of antiquity, women of the Bible.  So, he wanted all of them as a complete archive of my studio, which has been always called Haybarn Press or Haybarn Studio, because it started in a hay barn in western New Jersey -- when we moved away from New York with our (UNCLEAR) little babies and we took an old hay barn -- and the dairy stanchions became my press room and the first floor became Elaine's painting studio and sculpture studio, and the third floor, the hay loft, became yet another -- so, it was the Haybarn name that we kept going -- and in French, Les Éditions du Grenier when I first did my work with French poets.  So, to answer your question directly, I'm thinking about -- because it's -- I'm a nonprofit press; I've underwritten all this myself.  All these years we do it with our teaching income, and occasionally with support 49:00from -- we had a little bit of support from prints and subscribers.  But the press -- there's no profit involved.  It's a labor of love.  But it's a labor, you know, of one's life.  So, at this point, I'm ninety.  I thought this would be the last big portfolio I've done -- twenty-two poets, twenty-three poems.  But then again, it's like a curse, you know?  You get the addiction.  So, I've been coming across my old correspondence -- again, with Kathryn Hellerstein and her work with Kadia Molodowsky.  And then, I found a letter, which I had in my pile to show you, but I'll just tell you about it -- a letter from Jacob Glat-- Yaakov Glatstein to my mother.  When she was in her eighties and nineties in the nursing home, she still organized a Yiddish reading group, and she would 50:00invite poets from New York to come down.  So, Glatstein sent her a beautiful thank-you letter that I have, which I've sent to the YIVO archive, as well.  So, I was scrolling -- thanks to the internet, of course -- I was scrolling some more about Yiddish -- Yiddish women poets, particularly.  And I've al-- since Rokhl Fishman -- I grew up with her brother, Shikl, who went to -- who sat with me all through my eighth -- for my eight years to my seventeenth year in the Yiddish schools, we were buddies.  She left as a young teenager to go to Israel, and became the only American-born poet that's always included now in the modern anthologies of Yiddish-writing women poets.  So, I had done a broadside for her, which I sent to family years ago, a poem about the sun.  'Cause she 51:00always worked on a kibbutz, always in the vineyards, always writing heated poems, both about sensuality and about nature -- you know, that was -- she says the sun makes her aflame.  Well, that was Rokhl.  And now, unfortunately, I just read -- in looking on the computer the other day -- that Gella, her sister-in-law, died -- a Yiddish teacher.  And of course, her brother Shikl had died last year.  So, I'm back into my thinking, as one gets to at a certain age, of that chapter that you're talking to me about today, which keeps, you know, welling up in terms of not only identification, but pleasure.  And as I read about the sad stories of Margolin, or about the other po-- and of course Susman and all the poets, many of whom I don't know -- Yiddish women poets -- 52:00and that's why Kathryn's new book is one I'm interested in -- I'm thinking about doing a set of women Yiddish poets.  Now, whether -- this is -- I'm not sure whether I should make it a specialty of having a large group of women who were Jewish poets or were Yiddish poets, or simply do a portfolio -- which I haven't done -- of only women poets and include a large percentage which would be Jewish women.  And that's something I was going to ask you, since you're a poet, later in our discussion, which might be a direction.  Because there's something about isolating it into Jewish and Yiddish -- maybe it's more exciting to make it -- to universalize it and have them in there, with a notation that they're translated from the Yiddish.  Because there are so many women poets that I've been so close to.  Kathleen Norris has been my -- one of my earliest poets -- 53:00from South Dakota.  And Lea Graham, who's an Arkansas poet -- wonderful poet.  And Catherine Casper, from Texas.  And Deborah Pease, from Boston, who just died.  These are all women poets who are not Jewish who have always loved the fact that I mix and include them with Sutzkever, with others in the same grouping.  So, I'm not sure I'm gonna do it, but in a word, it's gonna be women poets -- with a great percentage of Jewish women poets, 'cause I really feel -- I think it was Margolin's tomb which was so sad, where she wanted inscribed on her tablet that she felt such a non-achiever that you should just remain silent when you stand there, out of mitgefil [compassion], you know, I suppose -- grieving with her.  It's too bad.  Because they all -- most of them, starting 54:00in Russia and in the early days when they came to America, were simply overshadowed by the male hierarchy, you know?  That's the way it was.  And Novershtern, if you know his critiques -- he's a very thoughtful guy -- he's written, on the internet -- I think he did a piece for the Jewish Women's Archive up in Boston where he talks about the notion of not expecting feminine poetry to be light and love and sentimental, and to find that so many -- so many of them -- Molodowsky, Margolin, and the others -- were really hard-hitting, you know?  Come on, they're sluggers.  I love it.  (laughs) So, I think that -- it may not hurt to bring that to light.  Because if they get placed, as my work gets placed at Stanford and Columbia and Yale and Harvard and wherever else it 55:00goes, these will reach some new people.  Incidentally, the Vassar thing, which I'm pleased about -- although it's maybe a little bit self-serving to say it -- the only reason I really agreed to give them everything and let them acquire -- they bought some and I gave them the rest -- was, I was assured by Ron Patkus -- he's not only the librarian; he's a professor, adjunct -- so he used this as a teaching collection.  So, the work's not gonna be locked in a drawer.  They're gonna be using it with students and teachers.  Otherwise, I'm not interested in having them archived.  I have drawers here.  So, it's important to reach people.  And maybe some folks will meet Jewish women poets they haven't met.

NP:  Great.  Thank you.

EC:  A long answer to a short question, I'm sorry.

NP:  No, wonderful.  Thank you.  I'd like to ask some questions about Yiddish more broadly.  Do you currently use Yiddish in your daily life?

EC:  Yes.  As a curious thing: my wife speaks Hebrew -- which she learned before she went to Israel to teach, and is still devoted to it.  But she insisted I try to talk Yiddish with her -- speak Yiddish -- talk Yiddish to her and speak Yiddish with her, so that she would pick more of it.  And she's thinking of taking some more classes.  So actually, when I get a chance, I read as much Yiddish as I can.  But I haven't got it that handy.  And I regret, in many ways, that I allowed it to slip for me.  Over the years, I would occasionally get an inquiry from a professor, as I did a few years ago, to translate a German Jewish collegiate periodical essay that they couldn't handle.  So, I worked with it a while, and then I asked Fishman to help me conclude it.  But I wish I did, and when I'm thinking about increasing my -- see, one of my regrets in life is I never learned Hebrew, because I think it 57:00would be great to have both.  Fishman, whom I liked so much -- my buddy -- at the end of his life, he spoke Hebrew and Yiddish, which I think is terrific of him.  So, I don't know if I'm too old to learn, but I'd like to try to learn some Hebrew, and at the same time, keep my Yiddish sharp.  But I read what I wrote when I was young, and I don't recall how fluent I was.  I was very fluent.  But that's when you're doing it, you know?  But over the years, I've written so many -- so many bulletins as a dean and as a provost and as a chairman over seven universities and colleges -- fifty years, sixty years.  I didn't write too many of them in Yiddish anymore.  That's why the ILPYC and the little mimeographed essays are still pretty -- I read them and I'm surprised (laughs) who wrote them.  (laughs) They were pretty good.

NP:  And you've taught Yiddish, as well, at the synagogue?

EC:  No, I gave a lecture -- or I -- you're right about that.  I did give a 58:00brief course in Yiddish to interested folks at the temple nearby -- Shaaray Tefila, it's a Reform temple.  And they have a Yiddish group now that meets every Thursday, fortunately.  My little group didn't last long, but I worked very hard to refine my lessons.  But as far as teaching, I didn't ignore it -- I didn't mention that when I was in college, I also taught in the Workmen's Circle schools -- I gave them art with Yiddish themes.  One of my after-school jobs -- my after-college part-time jobs was to go around to the Yiddish schools and also introduce them to a little art class with Yiddish.  But the funny thing about those teenage journals I showed you -- when I was on the search committee at the University of Illinois, the chairman of physics, who wore a yarmulke and happened to be Orthodox, came over to me and said, "I didn't know 59:00you first published at age sixteen, seventeen."  I said, "How do you -- what did I publish?"  He said, "You published some Yiddish."  I said, "How do you know that?"  He said, "I just met Fishman at Yeshiva University in New York, and he told me you and he did a little journal for the Yud Lamed Peretz Yugnt Club."  So, that was a funny echo, you know?  Nice.  In the middle of the University of Illinois.

NP:  What do you think of the idea that there's a Yiddish revival?

EC:  Oh, I'm delighted.  I wish it were more so.  As I said earlier -- very early, talking about my regret that the Yiddish culture has faded -- except for Jewish cookbooks, maybe -- and, like, our neighboring temple -- a yidish vinkl [Yiddish group, lit. "Yiddish corner"], which meets on Thursday -- but it's mostly for older people.  I wish it were younger people.  But of course, the Yiddish Book Center always astonishes me with their successes.  So, I think it's great.  I wish I were as optimistic as my wife is.  She feels it's really 60:00burgeoning.  And I'm not seeing how rich it is.  I hope -- I hope it is.

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

EC:  Oh, I think it'll never go away.  It may not be in the form and the culture I spoke of -- not the newspapers, not the trade unions -- but maybe in some other way.  Maybe the rediscovery in literature and maybe online is -- although I'm not an online person -- maybe that's the idea.  Maybe the fact that the Book Center is putting so much stuff out, recovering these treasures.  And I'd like to see the women poets recovered, too, as I mentioned.  It's a good thing.  I hope it will go on.  I wish that there were more activity in Israel.  Here, I can't speak up-to-date.  My last trip over there was 2009.  I don't know, in eight years -- Sutzkever used to tell me that there was a 61:00Sholem Aleichem house and I should visit it.  And I think he told me that Novershtern was active there.  I also believe that Novershtern is now a professor of Yiddish at Hebrew University, which, when I reviewed them for the government, they had some real problems with the library.  So, as far as I'm concerned, it may be -- as far as I -- I may not have known -- it may be that there are more -- there's a little more recognition of the values.  Sutzkever wanted all of my work with him to go to the Hebrew University archive, to Rafi Weiser.  And the actual, original bilingual one, I deposited with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  And Ben Gurion University, after we left, apparently gave an honorary doctorate to Sutzkever, which they had to present in person, because he was too ill to attend, which is -- are signs of the universities at least 62:00giving some recognition to what, perhaps, the Israeli sensibility had ignored.  When I first got over there, in one of my teaching visits with Elaine in 2002, and we went to Mitzpe Ramon, in the south of the Negev, which is a crater -- a miniature Grand Canyon -- there was a touring group that came through with older men and women.  And one of them came over to me -- asked me -- he said, "Are you an American?"  I said yes.  "Do you speak Hebrew?"  I said, "No, I speak Yiddish."  His face lit up.  He says, "Az m'redt nisht keyn yidish, iz mir nisht keyn yid -- If you don't speak Yiddish" -- (laughs) -- "you're not a Jew."  So, I figured, Well, that's pretty good.  He's a kibbutznik that hasn't given up, you know?  I hope that the -- I'd like to see some yidish-vinkls over there, too.  But I don't know enough about their education mandates to see if they would sponsor revivals like what we're talking about.  I occasionally see documentaries.  The ministry of education supports some Yiddish theater -- and 63:00stuff like that.  But I really don't know enough about it.  But I would love to go over again.  I was supposed to go this month, but we just weren't physically up to the twelve-hour trip, so -- maybe some other time.  But to answer your question, I think it's wonderful.  I wish I was closer to the Book Center so I could be there more often.  I know the classes at YIVO are well-subscribed.  And the Book Center -- and the colleges -- I believe it's picking up.  I don't -- there again, I knew Uriel Weinreich very well in the old days.  And Weinreich and Amik Brumberg and I and Shikl and a whole group of young women and men in New York and Philadelphia had this little group called the "Yugntruf" or "Yugnt klub."  And I have a page of minutes I may have written of one of our meetings.  It was so touching -- and all in Yiddish.  64:00And this would have been 1944 -- '43 -- where we were desperately insisting that we should not forget those who were killed, and that for every Jewish group where there were two of us, we should remember there are three -- the third one is gone.  But perhaps what I'm saying is maybe -- that the downside of it is that my grandson -- although he wants to go visit Ellis Island and see where we came from, I don't know how I could communicate any of what I'm discussing with you today to him.  It probably would remain for him to bump into something at college -- or walk into something at college that would open that up for him.  So, maybe that's part of the key.  I don't know.

NP:  What advice would you have for future generations?

EC:  Future generations of Yiddish speakers or non-Yiddish speakers?

NP:  In general.  Anything that you could share -- for, perhaps, aspiring artists, aspiring Yiddishists -- some wisdom from your life experience.

EC:  Well, your Jeffers line is a great line -- which says that the duty of poetry, the role of poetry, the purpose of poetry, is natural, beauty, and that all the other aspects of it, commendable as they maybe are -- love, intimacy, sentiment -- are reasonable, but they're not the reason, Jeffers says.  The reason is beauty.  I remember an editorial in a New York newspaper when I was in college, and it said prosecutors will never choose artists and writers for juries, because they're on the side of life; they're not on the side of death.  66:00I was called for jury service a few years ago, and I remembered it -- but I forgot it for a few minutes.  So, when he asked me what I did, I said I was an artist.  (Makes a thumbs-down motion) Down.  Second go-around, another panel.  What do you do?  I got smart.  I said, "I make books."  No good.  Third panel -- I was empaneled a day later.  What do you do, sir?  I said, "I'm a printer."  What kind of printer?  I said, "I run a press."  I'm a craftsman.  I may vote for a harsher punishment (laughs) than if I were an artist or a poet.  But the point is, there's -- that there's so much bad stuff.  I mean, I don't know if I'm -- I'm not a pontificator, so -- and I wouldn't even know what to advise, because the way I lived my life, the way we 67:00lived our lives, all grew out of the reason you're asking me to turn back into what shaped it all.  But it's being shaped like a new piece of sculpture.  It's being shaped with new -- new wood, new material -- and, what is perhaps more frightening, new electronics, where the robotics might replace the humans.  It's a worry.  Sherry Turkle at MIT worries that young people don't even look at each other's faces.  Milton Glaser, my old friend, the designer, said, "You'll really learn about people" -- if you talk to students -- "if you draw them.  And if you draw them, you'll finally see the color of their eyes, which you haven't thought about."  And what they're doing -- tragically -- I saw on television last night -- they're inventing a robot now which will read expressions on your face more quickly than a person could.  Ergo, the doctor or 68:00psychologist or psychiatrist or teacher won't really know what you're thinking as well as the machine, because the machine will pick up the tiniest flick of diffidence or abrupt anxiety or apprehension -- which is, I think, frightening rather than encouraging.  I don't think that's helpful.  Emerson said we're all the same, except the clothes change, you know?  It's not just the clothes, of course, but part of it is the clothes.  Whether you have a flip phone or an iPhone -- you know, whether you -- there's no way -- I guess when I -- when you think about the people I mentioned, when I say Greenberg, Schapiro, and Rosenberg -- and I said this in one of my lectures in New York recently -- when I was giving my last seminar at one of the famous universities, and this young man from a good college was listening to me, and I mentioned these figures as 69:00readings I wanted them to have.  And he said, "Mr. Colker, what I'd like you to do is get us an art gallery in New York."  That's what he'd like me to do.  So, that's what he was at the university for.  Now, life, of course, will teach him that that's not all that easy, and it's not why he should have been at the university -- maybe.  No, there are no answers; there are only questions.  But then again, when they asked Shimon Peres to define the Jewish people, he said, "Dissatisfaction."  He didn't mean moroseness; he meant curiosity.  Always wanting to ask the question, always arguing with Hashem, always asking why.  And that's part of who we are.  (pauses) I don't know that answered your 70:00question or not.

NP:  Thank you.  So, we're nearing the end of our time here, and before we wrap up, I'd like to ask if there are any other stories you'd like to tell or topics you'd like to touch on that we haven't yet discussed.

EC:  Gee, I probably do, but I can't think of any.  (pauses) I made some notes, but I haven't got that -- I've forgotten them.  I think you've covered them very well, actually.

NP:  Well, we can wrap up and then -- and I'll turn the camera off, and when we come back to look over your artifacts, if something comes to mind you can bring that up, as well.

EC:  Okay.

NP:  Yeah.  So, thank you very much.  I'd like to thank you, both personally and on behalf --

EC:  No, thank you, thank you.

NP:  -- of the Yiddish Book Center.

EC:  As Aaron Lansky always says, "A hartsikn dank [Thank you very much]."  (laughs) A hartsikn dank.  And a yasher-koyakh [great job], I'll add the Hebrew as well.

NP:  (laughs) Great.  Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]