Keywords:1910s; 1920s; Bund; Bundism; Bundist Jews; Chasidic Jews; Chassidic Jews; Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland; Hasidic Jews; Hassidic Jews; Jewish Labor Bund; Michał Klepfisz; Morgnshtern; Polish language; rabbi; secular Jews; Shmuel Zanvil Klepfisz; SKIF; socialism; socialist Jews; Sotsyalistisher Kinder Farband; teacher; The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia; Tsukunft; Union of Socialist Children; Yankev Klepfisz; Yiddish education; Yiddish language; youth movement
Keywords:1930s; Bund; courtship; dating; Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland; engineer; interclass marriage; Jewish Labor Bund; marriage; middle-class; Poland; socioeconomic status; The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia; Zakopane; Zionism; Zionist Jews
Keywords:America; American education system; childhood; childhood trauma; English as a second language; English language; Holocaust; Holocaust memorialization; Holocaust survivor; Holocaust trauma; immigrant families; immigration; immigration law; Jewish communities; Jewish identity; living conditions; Michał Klepfisz; migration; multilingualism; New York City; Swedish education system; Swedish language; United States
Keywords:akademyes (commemorative gatherings); Bund; childhood; childhood trauma; Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland; Der Shteyn (the stone); disability; disabled Jews; English language; Hemshekh Chorus; Holocaust; Holocaust commemoration; Holocaust memorialization; Holocaust memorials; Holocaust survivor; Holocaust trauma; immigrant; Jewish Labor Bund; Khurbn; Michał Klepfisz; migrant; The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia; Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Yiddish language; Yiddishism; Yiddishists
Keywords:"Bread and Candy: Songs of the Holocaust"; "Bridges"; "Conditions" magazine; "Found Treasures"; "Image Before My Eyes"; "In Their Own Words"; "Zeyer eygn velt"; 1970s; 1990s; Adrienne Cooper; Brooklyn; Chava Lapin; Chicago; City University of New York; closeted; closeted experiences; CUNY; doctorate degree; dyke lesbians; editor; employment; English language; English literature; graduate education; Illinois; in the closet; Jewish lesbians; Jewish Museum; job market; Joyce Rosenzweig; Klezmatics; lesbian; lesbian Jews; lesbian poets; Long Island University; Montauk; National Jewish Council; New Jewish Agenda; New York; New York City; outing; PhD; poet; postdoctoral studies; professions; secretarial work; secretary; teacher; writer; Yiddish education; Yiddish literature; Yiddish music; Yiddish poetry; Yiddish songs; Yiddish songwriters; Yiddish studies; YIVO
Keywords:Bund; Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland; erasure; feminism; Jewish Labor Bund; scholar; socialism; The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia; Yiddish culture; Yiddish language; Yiddish literature
Keywords:bilingual publishing; bilingualism; childhood; English language; language acquisition; multilingualism; poetry; Polish language; Swedish language; Yiddish language
CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney, and today is September 26th, 2017. I
am here in Brooklyn, New York, with Irena Klepfisz, and we're going to record aninterview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. DoI have your permission to record?
IRENA KLEPFISZ: Yes, you do.
CW: Thank you. So, I wanted to start with some family background. Starting
with your grandparents' generation, where did your family come from?
IK: On my mother's side, they were not originally from Warsaw, but I'm not
quite sure exactly where. But she was born in Warsaw, though some of her oldersisters were not. And that was a really kind of working poor class family of 1:00six children -- five daughters and one son. My mother was the next to theyoungest. And her father was a watchmaker. And he died when she wastwelve. And that was sort of the end of her schooling, as she went back --went to work. The older children became -- were more kind of upwardlymobile. The significant thing about her, I think, in terms of what happened toher afterwards, was that the older children insisted that she go to Polishschools rather than folkshuls [Yiddish secular schools]. She spoke Yiddish athome with her parents -- with her mother. But she went to Polish schools,partly because of their insistence. They thought that she would be better off 2:00and that she could function better in society. And it was certainly one of thecontributing elements to her survival during the war, because she really had noaccent. She didn't speak like it was a second language; it was like a firstlanguage. And it was quite impeccable.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
IK: The professions? I'm not totally sure. A couple of them were
teachers. They had sort of a little bit better education. There's aphotograph of one of them with a microscope -- I'm not sure what that means. Ihave to confess that one of the things that I'm thinking a great deal about --my mother just died a year ago in March. She would have been -- she was fourmonths short of her 102nd birthday. And one of the things, of course -- Ithink this happens with everyone -- is you start really regretting what youdidn't ask and what you didn't find out. And I'm sort of thinking a great dealabout that right now -- I mean, in the last few months -- especially with thetrip to Poland. So, I don't know totally, but it was not -- it was very much 3:00her -- I mean, the fact that she had to go to work at the age of twelve and thatshe went to night school and she was actually very interested in literature andwas -- she worked in the library. She was a volunteer in the library; I don'tthink she got paid. She was always a big reader, and she passed that on tome. So, the father was a watchmaker. I think I've actually found thegravestone in the Warsaw Cemetery. It was in a very older part of the cemeterythat had not been cleared out -- you know, the cemetery after the war was veryovergrown and very much abused. And his -- I've been back to that cemetery anumber of times, but this time they had cleared that part of it, and I think Ifound his grave -- which was sort of amazing. And it was also interesting, 4:00because it was to Herschel Perczykow. The year was actually -- just the "19"is visible -- the actual year -- but the reason I think it's him is because ofthe name, and also because it's in the corner of where the 19-- if my mother wastwelve and she was born in 1914, it would have been around 1926, '25, '27 -- itwas in that corner of the cemetery. And so, I think it's his grave. And alsothe -- the person at the cemetery told me it was a very unusual stone, becauseit was really the only stone written in Yiddish as opposed to Hebrew -- thanmost of the other gravestones. Because it says "fater un man" -- "father andhusband." So, that was sort of -- that's what I know -- a little bit about herfamily. Her older sisters were all married. One had a child, Majus -- my 5:00cousin Majus -- they all died during the Holocaust in various ways -- with theirhusband. The younger sister also didn't survive; she was younger than mymother, and my mother was sort of taking care of her. There was a big gapbetween my mother and the older children, so my mother was sort of the caretakerof Krisya. The brother survived -- Benjek, with his wife and son -- in Siberiaduring the war, and they all -- one of her sisters and the brother ended up inAustralia. That's my connection to Australia. And the family was veryapparently politically diverse. My mother was originally in the HashomerHatzair movement. She even went on one of these outings where she learned howto raise tobacco when she -- if she were to go to Palestine. So, there were a 6:00couple of Zionists, there were a couple of communists, and there were a coupleof Bundists. And my -- after she met my father, she turned into the Bundist. So, I -- but apparently, there were some tensions among all the in-laws aroundthese politics, so it was sort of an interesting -- sounds like a reallyinteresting family.
CW: So, not frum [pious]?
IK: Not from?
CW: Not frum -- not observant?
IK: Not frum. My mother, I think -- my grandmother, Rikla, who died during
the war, I think probably lit Shabbos candles. I don't know if they keptkosher. I don't think so. I just don't. I don't know quite why. I thinkthat, but I don't know specifically. It's one of the things I don't know.
CW: And can you just say your mother's name?
IK: My mother's name -- well, my mother had very -- a lot of very different
names. She was -- I think her Hebrew name was Shoshana, which means "rose," 7:00and in Polish, that's Róża. In Yiddish, that would be Rushke. During thewar, she acquired the name of Lodzia -- that was her Aryan name. And a lot ofpeople kept their Aryan names after the war, neither using their Polish or theirYiddish names. And I was sort of amazed by a number of times -- of people thatI had known for, like, forty years -- like, when I was in my forties -- todiscover that somebody had a Yiddish name, because I had always called them bytheir Polish, Aryan name. So, she was called Lodzia. My father called her --before that, my father used to call her Mała, because he was six feet and shewas practically not five. And "mały" meant "small." During the war she wasLodzia; after the war, when we were in Sweden, Gabi, who we used to call Gaga --there's a photograph of him over there -- couldn't say "Lodzia," so she became 8:00Mama Lo. And then, when we got here, she was Rose. And then, I don't know, Igot to calling her Mamashi, finally. And the last few years of her life, anumber of -- a good fifteen years, I think -- I don't even know how that cameabout, but that's -- so she had a lot of names, you know? Shoshana, Rushke,Mama Lo, Lodzia, Mama Lo. And Rose, and most recently, Mamashi. Yeah. Myfather's family was very, very different. His grandfather was a well-known,important rabbi, Zanvil Klepfisz. Peretz wrote a eulogy to him when he died. He was a man who married twice and had endless children with both wives. Oneof the children -- and I'm not sure which wife -- was my grandfather, Yankev 9:00Klepfisz, who was -- grew up Hasidic and broke with Hasidism and, I think, hiswhole family in his middle, late teens, and became a Bundist -- and an ardentBundist. My grandmother also came from a Bundist family. She came -- it wasthe Szulmans -- it was Salamons. She had a sister who married Victor Szulman,who was an important Bundist. And so, my father, between these two parents,was raised in very much of a socialist home. Both grandparents knew Yiddish,but as far as I know, they spoke Polish in the house. And that Polish wastheir first language. (pauses) The grandmother Salamon lived with them, and I 10:00heard a story that my aunt Gina, my father's older sister, would leave the --would go and sleep at her best friend's house when religious holidays camearound, because the grandmother insisted on some stuff; I don't know what. So,there was I guess that tension from that side -- but it wasn't coming from theKlepfisz side, it was coming from the Salamon side. And both my aunt and myfather grew up in very much a socialist, Bundist atmosphere. Gina, I believe-- and my father were very big sports people, so they belonged to Morgnshtern,but my father, I think, was also in SKIF and Tsukunft, so I don't know if -- specifically.
IK: I don't. I know I could look it up probably, but I don't. As I
understood it, the break was quite final, and that there was no contact with thefamily afterwards. I don't know whether that's true or not. My grandfatherwas a Yiddish teacher. And I got a letter -- and I never got a response back-- from a woman who found a textbook written by a Yud Klepfisz -- YankevKlepfisz -- and she wanted to know whether it was my grandfather. Now, itcould be; I don't really know. And I asked her, in fact, to send me aphotograph of it, and I never heard back. I have to write to her again. Iwas kind of curious about it, whether he was involved in any kind of -- I thinkshe told me it was, like, dated 1919 or 1920. He would have been -- my fatherwas already born by then, so -- I think that's what she said. I don't remember 12:00exactly now. I have to look it up. But he was a Yiddish teacher. Mygrandmothers, I think, taught in Polish schools. They were both teachers. So, it was really a middle-class family, very much in contrast to my mother'sfamily. I don't think they were crazy about him marrying her; I think theythought he was marrying down. I asked her -- and when they got married, theymoved in with his parents -- with my grandparents, the Klepfisz grandparents. When I asked my mother what that was like -- did she like living there? -- shesaid what she liked was that her mother, my other grandmother, Rikla, could comeover and take a bath once a week, because there was a bathtub. So, it was aclass difference that I think sort of impacted sort of a little bit some of therelationships. So, that's the background, basically. I mean, they met -- myparents -- one of the places I wanted to go this time to -- when I was in Polandwas Zakopane, because my parents met in Zakopane. Zakopane was a kind of 13:00resort, and a lot of the people went camping there and skiing in the winter andmountain climbing in the summer and that kind of thing. And the Bund hadoutings there. And I don't know whether she was there with a Zionist thing andhe was there with the Bundists, but they met skiing one winter, apparently. And they had, like, a four-year courtship. And they got married on herbirthday, in 1937. And that was the beginning. And he was still inengineering school -- he was still studying. He hadn't completed his studiesat the Polytechnic. And that was sort of the story of their marriage.
CW: How would you describe the Jewish Labor Bund to someone who didn't know
what it was?
IK: How would I describe the Jewish -- the Jewish Labor Bund began as a kind
of socialist movement aimed at Jewish workers and evolved into -- very quickly, 14:00actually -- it evolved into a kind of socialist, self-consciously culturallyidentified movement, so that they weren't just -- that it wasn't only interested-- or understood that just either having better wages or better workingconditions was really not enough, and that people needed schools and librariesand sports organizations and theater and art and literature in order to lead akind of enriched life. So, it's not a typical kind of just socialist -- youknow, kind of union organizing movement the way I perceive it. When I was 15:00growing up and hearing -- I grew up among Holocaust Bundist survivors, so Iheard a lot of talk about what their life was like before the war. And it wasreally interesting, because it -- I never really got lessons in the Bund, sortof. I was never -- and it took me a while to realize that everything that theywere talking about was the Bund. You know, it wasn't like it was an isolatedthing; it was like their whole lives were Bunds. I mean, they went to shule[secular Yiddish school] as they -- they went to theater, they went to concerts,they -- you know, everything was Bund, which I didn't realize. It took me avery long time to sort of process that, and to realize also that everything thatthey were telling me was from a Bundist perspective and that there were otherperspectives. But because I had never had that formal-- you know, that formal 16:00-- I was too young -- I mean, I was too old for Hemshekh. By the time theBundists organized Camp Hemshekh, I was already, like, eighteen. So, I was --I had done my counseloring in the summer and stuff, so I never -- I sort of --in fact, Mimi Ehrlich and I always lament the fact that we could not participatein Hemshekh. The people that went to Hemshekh got a real formal educationabout the Bund. I really didn't get it. I didn't get that. I got that fromjust listening to people -- talking to them, asking questions or whatever, andbeing answered. So, to me it's always been sort of -- a very -- I don't knowhow to put it -- saturated kind of -- saturated everything. I mean -- I almostcould not think of Jewish life in interwar Poland without thinking it had to be 17:00Bundist, you know? Because, you know, I used to tell the story that when Ifirst came to the States and I moved into this working c-- we moved into thisworking-class Jewish, very, very Jewish neighborhood, but when Friday night cameand my girlfriends would suddenly say, Oh, look, there's a star and we have tostop playing, I have to go home, I just didn't understand it. I just thought-- I really thought they were fake Jews, because you had to be a Yiddishist, asocialist -- (laughs) I don't know, in order to be -- those were the authenticJews, to me. And that was partly because that's all I ever knew, really, andall of this other stuff was just very strange and alien. So, that's sort ofthe Bund, to me. The Bund is sort of everything. It's the stuff you read. It's the stuff -- it's your politics. It is -- a lot of it is political in thesense of a socialist belief in economic equality and other kinds of 18:00equalities. But it's also a lot beyond that, as well.
CW: Where were you born?
IK: I was born in Warsaw during the war. And I was -- survived partly
because I was hidden in a place in a Catholic orphanage. And my parentsarranged for that. My father was killed in the uprising. He was one of thepeople involved in the uprising -- in organizing it. And he provided a lot of-- well, the possibility that -- he established sort of Molotov cocktailfactories in the ghetto and he smuggled in arms and he was -- actually, I just-- I mean, I always knew that he was killed on the second day. I didn'trealize he was really the first Jew in battle to be killed, which I just learnedthis summer. I always learn a little tiny bit -- something that you didn'tknow -- which sort of surprised me. I hadn't realized it. And I realize now 19:00that that's one of the reasons, I think, that his -- I don't mean to minimizewhat he did, but the fact that he was the first I think gave a lot of attentionto him in a way that, if he had been, like, the fortieth, wouldn't have -- asother people. So, he -- despite the fact that I really d-- the last time I sawhim I was one and a half -- I have no memory of him at all -- we are -- I'vealways felt very connected to him. Because first of all, we share a birthday;I was born on his birthday. And then, he was killed -- our birthdays are --(clears throat) excuse me -- our birthdays are April seventeenth, and the WarsawGhetto Uprising was April nineteenth, and he was killed on the twentieth. So, 20:00the uprising and his death and our birthdays have always been very, very closetogether, and sort of interlinked. So, it's a hard thing to get away from. (laughs) And so, that's sort of my beginnings. After the uprising and after hewas killed --
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
IK: -- came the Warsaw uprising. And the orphanage was being moved and my
mother was kind of nervous about losing track of me and she basically kidnappedme, because they didn't really want to let me go and she just took me. And wewent somewhere outside of Warsaw and we -- she was very isolated, but shereconnected with the underground, eventually, by accident -- and they helpedus. And then, after the war we went to Łódź. Warsaw was just destroyed,and we spent a year in Łódź with other Bundists, sharing an apartment. Andeventually, we went to Sweden. And we were being supported by the Jewish Labor Committee. 21:00
CW: Could you just say your father's name to me?
IK: Michał Klepfisz. And my aunt Gina, Gina Klepfisz. His parents were
Mariem and Jacob Klepfisz.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
IK: One of the things that I did this summer was I put up -- my mother put up
a stone for my father, even though he's not buried there in the Jewishcemetery. She did that in the '50s, I believe, at some point. And I decidedthis last year that I wanted a memorial to my mother's family and my father'sfamily, because there was nothing. And so, I was able -- because you can't putup new stones there, but they gave me permission to put, like, a plaque on thefoot of my father's stone, and I put down all the names of my father's familyand all the names of my mother's family. So, I'm glad you made me say thenames, because I think it's important. And there -- and I -- and that was 22:00actually completed before I left for Poland, so I was able to see it. So, Iwas really happy to see it. (laughs)
CW: What are your first memories?
IK: You know, at my age, it's very hard to say that, because at this point,
what I remember is remembering. You know, they're not -- (clears throat) --and I also have a number of photographs. They were all after the war,really. They're, like, starting maybe around 1945 -- which is when thephotographs also start. And my most -- I have a few memories of Łódź -- notthat much. I don't know how much I was really reinforced by the photographs. I have much more clearer memories of Sweden, but even then, when I actuallythink about it, we were there for three years -- you know, I can isolate certainimages in my eyes about that period. I remember much more kind of -- what I 23:00remember or what I, I guess, hold on to, is the fact that I was very happythere, that the mood was good, that -- and I think the photographs there alsoreflect that. We lived in a communal house, in which sort of each family orbroken family had a room, and there were communal kitchens. You know, it was akind of communal space. One of the things I think about -- or I've come torealize or I've thought about or thought through -- is that my mother must havebeen deeply depressed, I can't imagine that she wouldn't have been -- and that Ireally don't remember being affected by it, because I had an enormous amount of 24:00attention. I think children like me, who survived, were very rare, and we werereally special. And I got an enormous amount of wonderful attention inSweden. I was very happy there. I was very comfortable there. I felt verysafe. And so, I remember that part -- I mean, the memory is more emotionalthan visual. And I remember it as being really -- I always said Sweden wasEden, and that's what it felt like. I was totally unaware of the Holocaust. I don't remember ever hearing about it; I don't remember any commemorationsabout it; I just -- I don't think I heard of the Holocaust until I came to the 25:00United States. I don't think I knew what it was or how I was in it or what my-- you know, what my connection to it was. I didn't -- never heard of it tillI came here. And by then, I was eight, so that was pretty late. I'm not surethat they had -- I don't know what they did in Sweden. I don't know if theycommemorated on April nineteenth or not. I just -- I just don't know that. And I don't have too many people to ask, so -- another question that I didn't ask.
CW: What do you remember about coming over to the US? Do you remember the trip?
IK: I remember the trip. I even -- my mother saved -- one of the things --
my mother saved everything after the war, as I found. We came on the Swedishship, the Gripsholm, and my mother had the ribbon from it -- this blue ribbonwith gold writing on it. Gabi -- I have a photograph of Gabi -- we brought 26:00Gabi with us, because Hannah had to go earlier.
CW: Can you explain who Gabi and Hannah are?
IK: Gabi was the -- is the son -- was, he died -- he was like my younger
brother. We lived together in Sweden and in Poland, in Łódź. Hannah was-- Hannah and her husband survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. They wereinvolved in the uprising and they became partisans afterwards. Her husband,Gabrisz, was killed as a part-- when he was -- when they were in the woods, andHannah was pregnant. And she gave birth during the Warsaw uprising -- thePolish Warsaw uprising a year later. And Gabi was born. And there's, like, afamous description of what happened by Bernard Goldstein in "Five Years in theWarsaw Ghetto," where he talks about it. So, I have photographs of Gabi, like,right after the war in Łódź when he's just -- he can't even stand up, he'sjust an infant. And we lived together in Sweden. And then, Hannah had to -- 27:00was coming to the States, and I didn't understand why, but she could not come intogether with Gabi, and so she left him with my mother, for a few months, andthen we came together. And I had -- I suffered enormously for years, evenafter coming here, from any kind of motion sickness. Put me on anything thatmoved and I threw up: boat, car, train, bus, anything. I did not want to bemoved. (laughs) And I was horribly sick on the boat for seven, eight days. We were downstairs in this -- I think I shared a bunk bed with Gabi. He wasfour years younger than me, so if I was eight, he was four. And then, we gothere, and I have a photograph of Gabi in his little sailor's suit on the deck ofthe Gripsholm, when we landed. And he was immediately taken away. Nobodytold me he was leaving; I never got a chance to say goodbye. They didn't go 28:00far -- I mean, they were in New York City -- but it was just, like, this --nobody thought about these things. Nobody was particularly psychologicallyminded. I was deeply unhappy. I really was very happy in Sweden. I wasgoing to school. I knew Swedish. I had Swedish friends. I loved where Ilived -- it was very rural. It was out -- it was about twenty minutes outsideof Stockholm; it's probably a totally built-up suburb by now. But it wasrural; it was woods. I went to school on skis, on my bike. I went skating. I mean, I loved it. And I was thrown -- and also we lived in this communalhouse. And then, we came to the United States and my mother and I shared aone-bedroom apartment with somebody who didn't like kids, and we lived in theliving -- you know, living room -- and it was very bleak. And I have to say, Ididn't find the Jewish kids that I sudden-- I was the only Jew in Sweden, in my 29:00Swedish school, and I had no problems, but when I came here, I had real problemsfrom other Jewish kids, being a -- you know, a greenhorn or whatever. Mymother dressed me funny: I had funny braids, I had funny stockings, I had funnyhair bows. I mean -- (laughs) I wasn't pleased. And I'm -- it was a bigtrauma for me to -- I mean, I always considered coming here more of a traumathan anything else I had experienced up until then, which is probably not true,but it was certainly more conscious that I was very much wrenched from anenvironment that I really wanted and loved. And suddenly, I was a Holocaustsurvivor, which I didn't even know. And I was pointed to, and I was my fa-- Ihad no s-- I wasn't aware of any specialness in Sweden, and suddenly I wasspecial 'cause I was Michał Klepfisz's daughter and -- and there were theseterrible, frightening memorials. It wasn't much fun. It wasn't much fun. 30:00
CW: Did you understand why you had left Sweden?
IK: No. But everybody left. I mean, slowly -- I think by the time we were
left, we were -- I don't know if we were the only people still left in thehouse, but a number of people had left before us. We just knew -- I thinkpeople were -- -- well, the thing was, also -- the other piece of that, which Ireally did not understand until much later, was that really we weren't coming tothe States; we were going to Australia. My mother -- and I still have it --had a visa for seven days. We were supposed to stay in New York for a fewdays, then go to California, and then go to Australia. And I had one relativeleft in my father's family, my aunt Fela, who was my grandmother's sister. AndFela convinced my mother -- she came here before the war -- and my mother 31:00convinced -- and she convinced my mother that -- or maybe my mother intended itto begin with; it was very hard to get in here, so -- but once you're here, youget a lawyer and so on -- and she convinced her to stay. I don't think I wasaware of any of that. I mean, I don't think I -- not that I remember at all,that there was a change of plan or anything like that. I just -- you know,within a very short time, I was registered at a school where I didn't speak thelanguage, and -- you know, it was, like, trauma all over again. It was -- so,no, I didn't understand why we came here. I didn't understand why we had toleave. I don't -- it wasn't an age in which people explained a lot of thingsto kids. Really. I mean, we're so careful now about, is this gonnatraumatize the child and all of this. Nobody even thought about it. (laughs)It was really interesting, because the daughter of a friend of mine was taking a 32:00course on bilingualism and trilingualism, and she had to write a paper, and shewanted to interview me because of sort of my linguistic background. And so,she said, "Well, how did you learn Swedish?" I said, "I don't know." And shesaid, "Well, did they -- did anybody tutor you?" I said, "No. They juststuck me in a Swedish class, and somehow I learned Swedish." (laughs) Andthen, we got to -- and she said, "Well, how did you learn English?" I said,"Well, they just put me in a classroom, and -- I learned Eng--" (laughs) Andshe was just dumbfounded, because, you know, now you have all these -- you know,second language, ESL, and all of that kind of stuff. And it's true; they justdumped you into an environment, and as a kid -- you know, kids do pick up veryquickly. It's true. Up to a certain age. You know, Noam Chomsky says it'sgenetic, and it is, and you do pick it up. But there was no preparation oranything like -- you know, my mother studied English before she came here, 33:00'cause she knew she was going to Australia; it wasn't about the United States. But she never thought about preparing me. Because I don't know, they justassumed, I think, kids would just pick it up. And we did. We did.
CW: So, can you describe the neighborhood that you grew up -- that you were in
here in the Bronx?
IK: I was -- grew up -- we were very fortunate in many ways that we were -- we
got this apartment. It was a one-bedroom apartment in the Amalgamated Houses,which were established by the ILGWU, in -- I believe in the early '40s or late '30s.
CW: That's the Lady Garment --
IK: Yeah, International Ladies' --
CW: -- Ladies' Garment Workers --
IK: -- Ladies' Garment Workers Union. And at the time, you still had to be a
union member, I think. Not necessarily ILGWU, but you had to be a member of aunion in order to live there. And they were subsidized housing; they wererelatively cheap. But my mother couldn't even afford that, and so we had to 34:00share it with an older woman who was a well-known Bundist. She had the bedroomand we had the living room. She didn't really like kids, so it wasn't a greatmatch. And it was a working-class neighborhood, predominantly -- theAmalgamated at the time was, I would say, like, ninety-eight percent Jewish. The school was sort of like that -- maybe a little bit less, ninety-five percentJewish. Working-class. We had a Workmen's Circle and an Arbeter Ring shule,shule dray [school #3], which was one of the largest shules in the city --partly because the neighborhood was so intensely -- there were a lot ofBundists, there were a lot of Holocaust survivors, there were a lot ofYiddishists in the area. So, the school had, at one point, like, a hundredkids. And I was going to that in the afternoon and I was going to PS 95 duringthe day. The shule was five days a week. From the people that I knew in -- 35:00like, in my -- at the time, we lived in what was called the first building,which was a wonderful building of -- it was really two buildings built around ahuge courtyard, with a fountain in the center and privets and gardens. It wasreally lu-- you know, when I think about what they do with sort of subsidizedhousing now compared to what they did then, this was really a beautiful setting-- with ivy -- it's a four-floor walkup, two buildings, many entrances. Wewere H-22. Ivy on the walls. During the summer, a gushing fountain. Tulipbeds, privets. The pathways were colored slate -- you know, great for rollerskating. It was gorgeous. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous setting. Of course,it's not there anymore. But for the most part, the kids that I knew were 36:00American-born and were from American-born parents. I knew children ofsurvivors, but there were not many of them, and they were not necessarily all inthe Amalgamated. So, like, Mimi and I -- Mimi lived in Manhattan; I didn'treally see that much of her, even though our parents knew each other and soon. But we did -- I mean, I have a photograph of Mimi on her ninth birthday orsomething that -- on the piano over there -- that I'm in. And I found the kidsvery cruel. I mean, I found the whole switch to here -- I was never made funof in Sweden; I was never mocked; I never felt like an outsider. But I wasvery distinctly, I think, in many ways -- certainly in dress, I was aEuropean. My mother dressed me still like a European -- like she would. AndI didn't know the language. And that was apparently -- I was -- you know, I 37:00was mocked for it, in a way that I wasn't in Sweden. So, I found it a much --(laughs) ironically, a much crueler atmosphere than I had in Sweden. And it'ssort of ironic. I mean, it was Jewish neighborhood, supposedly a safeneighborhood, but I -- I had a lot of trouble. I mean, kids beat me up. Iwas sort of -- it was not good. It was not fun. And when I -- I know thatwhen I finally got to high school, which was a non-districted girls' school,Walton High School, and got away from the neighborhood kids, I had a bettertime. I made better friends and -- and so on. I mean, I just never reallygot along with the kids that -- in that neighborhood and in that -- especiallyin that courtyard; we'd call it the court. I don't know, there was something 38:00mean about it that I experienced and that made me feel very different. And theYiddish was al-- I mean, the fact that I was going to this Yiddish school --none of them went. The people that went were not people from the court. Theywere from other buildings or they were -- you know, somehow, the mix -- theimmediate mix of five or six friends that I had in that courtyard was verymean. And I had a hard time. (laughs)
CW: So, earlier you said you weren't aware of the Holocaust in Sweden. Do
you remember when you became familiar with that word or "khurbm [Holocaust, lit."disaster"]" or whatever the word was -- and what that meant?
IK: I don't remember the first time, but I know it was here. I was -- we
came here April eleventh. Now, I know for a fact that -- and there were 39:00usually at the time numerous memorials -- they were called akademyes[commemorative gatherings] -- that my mother went to one -- already -- just afew days after landing here. I didn't go with her to that one. Whether shewent to others and I was taken, I don't remember. I remember probably thefirst one was probably the year after. And I found them very frightening. Ithink I was very, very shy. I mean, my experience here made me -- I don'tthink I was that shy in Sweden, but I was very shy, and suddenly I was the focusof a lot of attention in a way that I didn't like -- with strangers. It wasone thing to have attention from people you knew, but strangers, and beinglooked at, and you know, I didn't know what it meant to be Michał Klepfisz's -- 40:00but suddenly I was this -- (laughs) I was even weirder. I just didn'tunderstand a lot of it. And it was very frightening, you know, in thosedays. I've described this. First of all, there were hundreds and hundreds ofsurvivors in the city, and they would come. And these meetings were -- theseakademyes were very frightening to me. First of all, there were a lot ofpeople with a lot of disabilities that I wasn't used to seeing. People with alot of numbers on their arms, which I had begun to understand what it meant. And the talk from the podium was very -- (clears throat) very unguarded --talked very much about tortures and camps and -- I mean, there were alwaysperformances of songs from the war years and ghetto lider [songs] and -- and 41:00always -- you didn't applaud because it wasn't a performance, it was amemorial. And at the same time, there would be people who were openly, openlyjust weeping out loud. I mean, to a nine-year-old, that's a pretty (laughs)scary scene, and mixed in with the fact that I wasn't there anonymously, even. I couldn't really even hide. It did not leave a great impression on me. Imean, it was very, very frightening. And it made me feel in some way that Iwas in great danger, in a way that I don't think I'd ever experienced before. And I think it was very destructive for me personally, and really traumatizingme for -- it took me a long time to get over it. And I reached a point -- whenI was about fifteen -- the thing was, see, they always used me as a symbol for 42:00all the children that didn't die. I had to light a candle for the million anda half children that died. That was my job. And I don't think it was everyyear, but it was quite a few times. And one time, when I was standing onstage, they had the six people that were gonna light the candles, I don't know,something like that. Somebody said -- pointed at me and said, "She wassnatched from the -- she was snatched from the ovens." And I almost fainted. I was, like, fifteen when they said that. I could barely keep standing. Itreally terrified me. And I told my mother afterwards that I would never goagain. And my mother, who was very conscious -- I mean, she wanted me to go tothese things; she felt it was an obligation -- surprisingly didn't fight me onit. So, she must have understood that they went a little bit too far. But -- 43:00and I didn't. I didn't go for many, many years. And even now, I just go to-- the one place I go is Der Shteyn [The Stone], which is on Eighty-ThirdStreet. I won't go to -- I went a few times -- I hated -- there was a periodwhere every politician would show up at one of these things and make a pitch. I just hated it. I just thought it was hypocritical. I just thought it was-- I don't know. It made me really angry. I just wanted to stay away. Ididn't feel it was, like, real -- paying tribute. And -- so I go to theShteyn, which I think is very -- usually a very simple one. And there's nottoo much fanfare and stuff. And we do our shtik [thing], and I'm very happy. And it's actually usually on the nineteenth. And that does it for me.
CW: What is the Shteyn?
IK: The Shteyn was really the first Holocaust memorial, I believe, in the
United States. It's a stone in Riverside Park on Eighty-Third Street. And itwas done for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and for the Bund. And the idea was 44:00that there was gonna be a statue there, which has never materialized. ButBundists and children -- children of Bundists -- and now children of Bundistsand friends of Bundists now gather there usually every April nineteenth, nomatter when, rain or shine, at two or three in the afternoon, work or no work,and we have a gathering. And there is usually at least one speech in Yiddish,and the rest are in English. There's -- somebody will sing a cappella somesongs or recite a poem, some kind of memorial, and that's it. People lay downflowers on the stone. It's on Facebook if you want to look at it and connectwith people there. It's called "Der Shteyn" or the -- they may even call it"The Stone," I don't know. And that's what we usually do -- that's -- a wholebunch of us -- I mean, it's dwindled. There were a lot of survivors coming to 45:00it, Yiddishists and -- people from Hemshekh usually show up there. So, that'sDer Shteyn.
CW: What are your memories from shule?
IK: I had some -- I have nice memories of shule. Partly I didn't want to go,
of course, because it was in the afternoon. And I remember learn-- I thinksome of my best memories are sort of memorizing -- I can't remember 'em all, butI remember some poetry and some songs. I think that was the thing I lovedbest. I think my introduction to loving poetry and literature came fromYiddish, very much. And I remember stuff that I didn't like, which was -- wehad to do performances, you know -- and I didn't like that. I never likeddoing that kind of stuff in public -- reciting in public. But on the whole, itwas sort of -- it was really interesting, because, you know, the '50s were so 46:00culturally different than what -- anything that we have now. I mean, there wasno bridge between that public school and that shule. In public school, we didEaster -- even though it was, like, ninety-eight percent Jewish, we did Easter,we did Christmas. There was not one mention of anything Jewish. And in theshule, it was like the rest of the world didn't exist. (laughs) And why aren'tyou speaking to everybody in Yiddish was the kind of thing. So, it was sort of-- but it was more heymish [cozy], you know, in the shule. It was looser. Wewere -- I was less well-behaved. You could fool around more. But I took itas part of my life. I mean, it was something that I understood I needed todo. And I graduated and went on to mitlshul [high school], which was also a -- 47:00that was really a struggle when I think back on it, because the Arbeter Ringmitlshul was on Saturday and Sunday, downtown, which meant I was in school sevendays a week. And I think that that's really unfair to children. It does not-- I think it's just unfair. And it -- I don't think it builds good will,(laughs) to say the least. But I went for four years. I think I was evenmore badly behaved (laughs) there -- which I wouldn't have acted out in highschool at all. I think I graduated from mitlshul when I was in my junior yearof English high school. So, I was on -- I mean, that was a long trek. Iloved some of the other students. I mean, we had a good time with eachother. Again, I think I liked some of the literature or I didn't like some --I think we were obnoxiously terrible, and teenagers, and I always feel very 48:00guilty, because one of the teachers, Khaver [Comrade] Kazhdan, was my father'steacher, and I think he was looking forward to teaching me, and I think he wasgravely disappointed. And I always feel really, really bad, 'cause he was alovely man. And, well, you don't -- you don't recognize lovely men at the ageof fifteen. (laughs)
CW: Were there any teachers from shule or mitlshul that were meaningful to you
or left an impression on you?
IK: (pauses) No. I remember them -- I mean, one of my problems in mitlshul
was also -- (clears throat) -- that -- and this was a problem throughout growingup, was -- I'll tell you the following story. Khaver Bernshteyn was theprincipal of the mitlshul. I think this happened either in my third or fourthyear; it might have happened in the -- well, maybe -- I don't know, it waseither the third or fourth year. It was very long on. And somebody came to 49:00the mitlshul and Khaver Bernshteyn introduced me and said, "Zi iz [She is]Michał Klepfisz's daughter" -- you know, "tokhter [daughter]." And I got veryenraged. I got very upset. And I said to him, "You know, I have a firstname." And you know, he didn't know it. And that was really a problem. (laughs) That people kinda knew who I was in relationship to my father, but theydidn't really know me. (laughs) And that plagued me a lot in that world. Ididn't like it. But I was very timid. And that I even said that to him wasreally totally uncharacteristic, 'cause I was extremely timid. I did notconfront people in that way. And if I was bad, I was bad together with otherfriends, not by -- standing by myself. (laughs) So, that was a problem for me 50:00in that world, in that I was too identified -- that I felt then -- and it tookme a very -- many, many years to get past that. Sort of -- it was a longshadow, and it was -- it followed me. I had this really interesting experiencein the '80s; I interviewed -- I don't know if you know who Alice Shalvi is. She's a major -- she's quite elderly now -- she's a major feminist in Israel,and I interviewed her in the '80s. And she said something when I -- after Ifinished the interview, she said, "You know, Klepfisz," she said, "that's veryfamiliar." I said, "Oh, you know about my father." You know, I just -- Iwas, like, in my forties already. She said, "No, I never heard about your fa--I never heard of your father." And she said, "Oh, I read your poem!" (laughs) It was, like, the first time that somebody who didn't know my father 51:00knew me. It was -- I was already in my forties. I had never come across thatbefore. It was very, very strange. But I lived with that as a teenager andinto my twenties. It was very difficult. It was another thing that kept meaway. I mean, I just didn't like it. I wanted to be able to -- you know, itwasn't that I didn't want to be associated with him; it had nothing to do withthat. It just -- I just felt I had no space for myself somehow. You know?
CW: I'm wondering if you can think back on those early years and think about
-- do you remember any -- how you felt about Yiddish?
IK: I do. I mean, you know, Yiddish is very -- I can't totally accurately
describe how -- what it was in my life. My mother, for example, once told methat somehow, I don't know when or where, somebody taught me a Yiddish song 52:00during the war, and it drove her nuts. It was like, (sings) "Sorele, sorele,fort in vald avek, vek, vek [Sarah, Sarah, goes out into the forest away, way,way]." And she said I sang it obsessively, and she was -- we were passing, andshe became very frightened. I don't know who taught it to me, and I don't evenknow if it's a true story, but -- and that she immediately translated it intoPolish and made me sing it in Polish, and that's how she got me off of it. Iknow that after the war -- immediately after the war -- we were surrounded bypeople who spoke Yiddish, in Łódź. And certainly in Sweden in the house,there were people who were speaking Yiddish. Whether -- how many of them spokePolish to each other, I don't know. I don't know whether she spoke Polish toHannah or she spoke Yiddish to Hannah. Same thing with Bolek. But I do know 53:00that I understood it. I don't know whether -- maybe I did speak it. I don'tknow. I definitely think I had a head start when I started the shule from theother kids. At that point, it was a question now of reading and writing andspeaking. And I had enormous -- my mother had enormous pressure, first ofall. My mother continued always to speak to me in Polish. I never spokeYiddish in the house. People always say I was a native Yiddish speaker; it'sjust not true. In fact, I had and maintain a kind of phobia about Yiddish. Alot of it stemmed from the -- there was enormous pressure on my mother and on meto speak Yiddish. I was always -- I mean, you have to understand, I've beenthrough Polish, Swedish, English, and now Yiddish, and now people wanted me tospeak Yiddish. And I was always afraid that I didn't speak it well, that I 54:00would make mistakes. And I was embarrassed. And I don't really know how wellI spoke it at that time. I just don't know. Eventually, what happened wasthat my reading of it was much, much better than my speaking of it. I didn'tuse it for a long time. I moved awa-- I mean, I was living in Chicago, I wasin graduate school, I was really focused on English. I came back for a whileand I switched careers and I was gonna go into Yiddish and I went to YIVO and Iwas studying -- doing sort of postdoc work there -- and I was teaching Yiddishin the summer program. But even then, I had to really brush up on mygrammar. I mean, I didn't -- up until then, I had never formally looked atYiddish grammar. We had -- whatever I learned -- I mean, I didn't learnofficial grammar in shule or even in mitlshul. But again, it was always -- I 55:00was very -- I've always felt very insecure. I mean, Mordkhe Schaechter, who Iadored as one of my teachers -- I thought he was one of the great teachers --always said I -- told me I had -- that my Yiddish was fine and that I had just acomplex and that I had to get over it. (laughs) I don't think I've ever gottenover it. I'm very self-conscious. I don't know. And I've sort of given upon working on it, because I feel like I -- I'm tired, I'm old, and I don't needto be anxious about things. So, I could probably hold this interview inYiddish, but I don't even want to think about it. It just -- it's hard forme. It's just -- part of it is -- well, a great part of it is justpsychological. And I sort of regret it. I mean, it's sort of interesting --I've always considered myself, like, bad in languages, but when I look back, you 56:00know, and I've thought now about sort of -- I think I was actually quite good inlanguages. And it was funny, in my mother's apartment, one of the things Ifound was -- a couple of months after we came they sent me away to Workmen'sCircle camp -- to the Arbeter Ring camp -- which was another terrible trauma,because I'd lost everybody in Sweden; now I lost my mother, too. And they sentme because they said that -- they had those polio epidemics then, and they saidit was safer to go out of town. So, it was a very Yiddish-oriented camp. Zalmen Mlotek's father, Yosl Mlotek, was the head counselor then, and ChanaMlotek, his mother, was, I think, the head counselor on the --
CW: Was this Kinder Ring?
IK: Yeah, this was Kinder Ring. And so, I went there the first summer. I
mean, we arrive in April; in July, I'm stuck in this camp. But what I foundwere these Yiddish -- I had apparently written Yiddish poems -- now I don't knowI learned to even write Yiddish -- that Yosl sent to my mother and my mother 57:00kept. So, I didn't even know these things existed until, like, a few monthsago when I found them in my mother's apartment. So, I don't really know. Imean, I don't -- I'm surprised that I was actually writing in Yiddish. 'CauseI don't know whether I went to the shule or I learned it -- I mean, I had justgotten here, and I don't think I'd ever written a Yiddish word. I had writtena little bit in Polish with my mother's help, but I don't think I had everwritten in Yiddish. So anyway, I wrote some Yiddish poem that Yosl was justthrilled with (laughs) -- and sent it to my mother. So, I'm very foggy aboutwhat it was like for me -- at that period. I don't remember it. I don't -- Icertainly don't remember writing the poem. I know my English was still bad; Imean, I was still struggling with it. But it was -- I mean, that's the way todo it. You send somebody away to an all English-speaking camp and nobodyspeaks to you in Polish or Yiddish and -- and you survive. (laughs) 58:00
CW: Do you remember when you started writing?
IK: I started writing in high school. I was a terrible English student; it
was my worst subject. But around sixteen, I became -- I had always been areader, but at sixteen, something clicked in a way that it hadn't before, and ithad much more meaning -- gave me -- I don't know why I read before, but atsixteen, something happened that made me realize that what I was reading hadsome impact and meaning and -- (laughs) and a world in a way that I hadn'tbefore. And so, I badly wanted -- I mean, I was kicked out of honors English'cause I was so bad, and -- I think -- I mean, I always struggled withEnglish. That was the other thing about Yiddish that I want to put intoperspective -- that English was very difficult for me, and I think it was all 59:00psychological. I think I didn't want to come here, I didn't want to learnanother language. And it plagued me into graduate school. I mean, I just didnot understand English grammar. But I also have to say that nobody took thetrouble to sit down with me and really work on it, like, Why are you so terriblein this? And I think writing secretly and writing poetry was a way of just --I did want to express myself, but I didn't want anybody to tell me it waswrong. I didn't want critiques. I didn't want anything -- I just wanted tobe left alone. And that's when I started writing. A lot of it was -- I don'teven have it. I mean, I remember looking at some of it; it was just junk. But I think it was a way of -- there was a need, in some way, to sort ofexternalize and to try to articulate things. And English would have been theonly language that I would have tried it in. There was no thought of doing itin Yiddish or anything like that. I mean, I had been struggling with Yiddish 60:00-- I mean, with English -- for many, many years. And that's where my battlewas. My language battle was really with English.
CW: Were there writers that were particularly meaningful for you as you -- in
that time when you were talking about at sixteen when the books started having adifferent meaning for you? Are there writers you remember?
IK: Well, one of the things -- I remember two things. One of the things that
I always liked was, I sort of liked the kind of Yiddish poetry of like, MorrisRosenfeld. I liked somebody telling a story -- narrative. I liked narrativein poetry. And I liked what -- I just had a sort of mini-disagreement withsomebody about characterizing somebody as -- some poet as folksy, which I thinkis a put-down, but I think the sort of folk writers always sort of impressed 61:00me. And on the English side, the first -- I mean, I -- most of it wasincomprehensible to me. I remember reading "The Ancient Mariner" in the eighthgrade and just having no clue what the hell it was about. I mean, I didn'tunderstand the language, I didn't understand the story, I didn't understand theChristian -- you know, anything about it. But when I got to high school, I wasintroduced to Robert Browning's sort of dramatic monologues, and they intriguedme a lot -- the idea of somebody speaking, and kind of through their speechevokes an entire context and an entire story, even though it's just from oneperspective. So, I loved -- very early on, I liked Robert Browning's -- Iliked that form -- which was not that far, really, from the form in Yiddish thatI sort of liked. So, that's -- I think that's sort of -- has stayed with me. 62:00I still like -- I think I write narrative poetry a lot -- not always, butpredominantly. I like things -- and I like, to some degree, the dramaticmonologue. I still like that thing of a voice kind of articulating somethingin a charged atmosphere somewhere. So, that -- and I think both Browning andRosenfeld are really -- there's something about the aural quality that I like. And I think a lot of my own poetry is very aural. And I -- even when I write,I will say it out loud to myself over and over again. I want to hear it. Iwant to hear how it sounds. Not only -- I like to manipulate it on the pageand how it looks, but I also want to be able to hear it. And so, I think -- 63:00and I think sometimes people are surprised when they hear it, because theydidn't read it the way I read -- the way I hear it and the way I read it. So,I think that's stayed with me. And I think it was a great -- a really great influence.
CW: So, I'm curious about another part of your life -- about realizing you
were a lesbian and when that happened and how it fits in with what we've beentalking about.
IK: Well, it fits in a l-- it's really interesting. You know, one of the
things that I remember very much about the second wave in general was the fearof Jewish community of feminism, for example, and that it was gonna push womenaway and we were gonna lose these women to -- you know, to feminism. In fact,it was almost the opposite. What happened was that feminists decided -- Jewish 64:00feminists decided to either reclaim some stuff or -- they pushed into the Jewishcommunity rather than -- and people who had been outside of it, suddenly, womensaw that there was a way in because of these other Jewish feminists. I thenbecame -- I experienced a lot of homophobia when I came out. I came out around1974. And I had -- and during those middle years, I was sort of immersingmyself in the YIVO, I was teaching in the summer program, and so on. A numberof things happened. I experienced quite a bit of homophobia, and I withdrew. And to some degree, I think -- I think, I don't really -- can't say -- at thetime, I thought I had really turned my back on it. But the opposite happened,because -- (laughs) because, you know, during the second wave, everybody wastelling their story. And my story -- a lot of people said, (gasps) This sounds 65:00so familiar! I come from a somewhat similar, not exactly socialist -- Yeah, myparents spoke Yiddish -- or, Tell me some Yiddish women writers. Well, I was-- I don't know any. (laughs) Here I had all this -- I didn't know any. So,in some ways, the fact that I got pushed into this -- they pushed me right back,in a way, because people wanted -- and here I was, talking about the Bund and soon, and I didn't know a thing. So, that pushed me back into sort ofresearching. And I remember going up to -- and Aaron will remember this, too-- when he was working with Sharon Kleinbaum -- like, 1980, '81, or whenever itwas -- going up there when they were -- they didn't really even have abuilding. I think they had everything in a Dumpster or -- I don't know what --they were trying to sort things and it was just really the beginning. Andtrying to find just -- give me a woman -- give me a book that looks like it's 66:00written by a woman -- (laughs) whose name looks like a woman; it's not aninitial, but we know for a fact it's a woman. And that was how, basically, itstarted. And you know, I think Sharon wrote to me, because she knew I was outand she -- you know, and she said, "We'd like you to come up." And blah, blah,blah. And I did. So, it was like I was pushed to do and look at things thatI had not been told -- I mean, I was sort of -- every minority woman did this. They went back to their communities and they said, Where are the women? Let mesee where they've been hidden, where they've been buried, who's forgotten, whoshould be remembered. We all did that with our own communities of origin, andI did the same thing with the Yiddish. And so, when I did with MelanieKaye/Kantrowitz -- when we did "The Tribe of Dina," we highlighted Fradel Shtok,who I'd never heard of before, and Kadia Molodowsky, who I had, but I didn't 67:00even know that she wrote prose. And we published -- I translated two shortstories by both of them. And aside, I think, from Rokhl Korn, it was, like,the first time that these people's prose was being shown. So, it -- in manyways, they're intimately connected. And a lot of the people that were involvedwere gay; a lot of the women were lesbians. And I think altogether -- I mean,the -- I think there's been a very large proportion of gays and lesbians in theYiddishist movement. I mean, I remember one time at KlezKamp in the '90s where-- I don't know why somebody said this -- they wanted a photograph or somethingand it was, like, during one of the meals, and they said, "Everybody who's gayand who wants to admit it should go in that corner." And, like, half thedining room got up. (laughs) And nobod-- we didn't even know (laughs) thatthere were that many. (laughs) I didn't know. I was, like, shocked. (laughs) And so, I think it's interesting that gays were drawn to this -- Jewish 68:00gays were drawn to this particular legacy -- and have contributed just somuch. I have a photograph -- I don't know, maybe you can take a picture of it-- I don't remember what year it was, it was very early -- there's a photographof me and Lorin Sklamberg and Yankl Salant and Jeff Shandler carrying this thingin a gay pride march called, I guess, "dos freylekhe folk [the gay people, lit."the happy people"]" -- the gay -- you know, something -- and then in English, Ithink it says "Yiddish gays," or something. I'll show you the photograph. "Bridges" made it into a postcard. So, it was interesting the way I moved away 69:00and then the way I got pushed back. And I have to say, I mean -- there was alot of resistance. I think it wasn't -- there's an enormous amount ofprotectiveness -- of sort of like, the three classic writers. You're not --can't say that they were sexist. Why? I mean, why were they -- were theyreally, I mean, the only three men in the last century who were not sexist? Itjust doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter if they wrote pro-women stuff;everybody wrote pro-women stuff. How did they lead their lives? What didthey do about it? I mean, we always say ant-- you know, we're all anti-racist,but we accept the fact that we can't always -- and we don't always put it intoaction, and it's very deeply ingrained. And socialists and Bundists were veryeager to get women out from under what they considered restrictions in thereligion, but once women were out in the secular world, they experienced the 70:00same sexism. (laughs) So, the resistance to criticizing, you know, sort ofYiddish literature as being hostile to women and/or not welcoming to women ornot valuing women was very -- it was quite strong. I mean, I remember somebodystanding up -- who I will not mention by name -- but standing up and saying thatthe only people who are interested in gender are lesbians, for example. Imean, this was at a Jewish, Yiddish -- I mean, it was ridiculous. It was justsilly. But it was there. And the resistance, I think, to -- you know, at thetime, in the '80s and '90s, people did not say that they were feminists. Theywould either say that I'm above the fray, I'm this, I'm that. Now everybody'sa feminist, you know? Now it's okay. But that wasn't so true. And -- I 71:00don't know. It was a hard time. But it was also a very exciting time,because there were, like, people who were dying to have this information and whoreally embraced it. I mean, "The Tribe of Dina" went -- the fact that youcould have a secular book -- up until then, all Jewish feminist stuff had beensort of religiously or observance-oriented, and this wasn't. That was onething. Then there was -- everybody said -- I mean, in reviews -- it wasinteresting -- they said that everybody -- that it was a gay anthology, which itwasn't. I mean, Melanie and I were lesbians, but we had a lot of straight(laughs) -- we were not intending to have a lesbian anthology. I think it gavepeople a way back -- women a way back -- for a lot of women -- who weren'tinterested in the Jewish feminist sort of religious revival or transformation,but were interested in the secular. And I think we provided that for them. 72:00But I -- you know, I can't honestly say that that's the direction I had plannedto go in. I can't -- I mean, I think circumstances pushed me there.
CW: So, I want to get the sequence a little bit. So, you were in Chicago,
and then you said that you sort of got interested in Yiddish and came and wereworking at YIVO, is that right?
IK: No. No, no, no.
CW: No?
IK: I got my -- I went to graduate school in Chicago and I came and I was
hired at Long Island University here in Brooklyn. I hadn't quite finished mydissertation, but I finished it that first year. I had very bad luck with mygraduate work. I was getting my degree at a time when we were totallyoversupplied; PhDs were totally oversupplied. It was very difficult to get ajob. Me getting this job in New York was, like, a miracle. I mean, it wasthe only interview I had, and I happened to get it. And so, I was lucky. 73:00However, also at -- this is how forces influence your life. LIU is a privateschool; people pay tuition. While I was at LIU, the City University became anopen college -- I mean, that's when they had open enrollment. And so,naturally, LIU lost students, and naturally, they had to start cutting back. Iwas there four years. I probably would have gotten tenure; I don't know forsure -- not on the basis of scholarship, but I was beginning to publish, and Iwas lucky enough that that English department happened to value creative work,so a number of the writers -- I mean, which was good for me, 'cause I gotexposed to published writers -- were there because of their creative writing,and it looked like that was gonna happen to me. But because they were losingso many students, they started -- the whole school started cutting back on theiruntenured faculty. And it was -- you know, last hired, first fired. And so, 74:00after four years and having my degree and being pushed by them to get my degree,I lost the job. So, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went out and I-- for a year I lived in Montauk, New York. I put together my first book ofpoetry there. And that's when I came out, also. And I came back and I joineda lesbian poetry group, which -- and eventually, some of us turned out to bemore successful or more -- better known. I got a job -- I needed a job, andHannah, who had been with us in Sweden, was then secretary of YIVO -- offered meone of these jobs to work on "Image Before My Eyes." They were doing a showand it was, like, to do captions or something. And while I was there and wastalking to some people -- and because of my background, because of the PhD, theysaid, Why don't you take the Max Weinreich program? Not the Uriel Weinreich --the summer thing -- but you should maybe go into that, too, and formalize your 75:00grammar, and maybe you could have a career here. So, they put me into apostdoc program, and I did that for two years.
CW: This is all in the '70s, right?
IK: Yes. This is like, '74 or '75. And I started also -- they immediately
put me into teaching. I taught with -- co-taught with Chava Lapin. It wasvery frightening to me because it was all a bit fast and a bit much, and givenaltogether my feelings about my own Yiddish -- but I didn't find itcomfortable. I mean, I had to be closeted. At the time, I also startedediting "Conditions" magazine, which was -- it was not a lesbian magazine, butthe four of us were dykes -- but it became a very influential magazine. And itwas via this magazine that I was kind of outed. It was a complicated thing. But anyway, I decided to leave. I thought I -- it was over. It didn't 76:00work. And --
CW: At YIVO?
IK: Yeah. And so, I stopped. I taught that last summer, and then that was
it; I taught for three summers. I don't even remember what -- I think -- ohyeah, I worked in that law office for a while. I did all kinds of -- I couldnot -- I mean, at the time, I -- the only jobs that I could probably get -- andprobably get fairly easily -- were in the South, and I, having just come out andbeing a Jew, I was not gonna go to the South. I just didn't want to do it. But I stood no chance of getting any job elsewhere. And that went on for avery long time. But by then, I was doing other things -- I was alsopublishing, so I was earning partly some living by doing readings, lectures, andalso doing office work -- temp work -- I would get various things that I did -- 77:00secretary -- I did a lot of secretarial work -- before computers. Oncecomputers came in, I couldn't compete. And that's when I -- I also became -- Iwas executive director of New Jewish Agenda for its last two years, and youknow, I wrote -- I did some performance pieces with Adrienne Cooper and some ofthe Klezmatics. We did "Bread and Candy: Songs of the Holocaust." And then,Adrienne and Joyce Rosenzweig and I did "Zeyer eygn velt" -- "In Their OwnWords" -- about Yiddish women poets and songwriters. So, we did those at theJewish Museum. I mean, I did all that kind of thing. And then, also in the'90s -- well, two things -- two big -- very big things. One was writing theintroduction to "Found Treasures," which took me almost, like, nine months -- Imean, it was a lot, a lot of research. And the other thing was, I worked with 78:00National Jewish Council for two years on producing a women in Yiddishconference, a very big conference here in New York, which we had one night atHunter College, and the next day it was at JTS. So, those were very -- youknow, in between that, I wrote articles for, you know, "Bridges," and I didtranslations and stuff like that. But it was all very unmapped and unplannedand sort of ad hoc this and ad hoc that. (laughs) Nothing particularly organized.
CW: At what point did Yiddish come into your writing?
IK: In the '80s, when I -- I've written about this -- I was rooming with
Gloria Anzaldúa, who was a Chicana lesbian writer from Texas. And we were 79:00teaching in a program in Santa Cruz -- a summer three-week -- I think it was athree-week program. It was called Women's Voices, and it was about -- it was awriting program, basically. It had, like, four teachers; we were two teachers,and we shared a suite at Santa Cruz. And she always joked afterwards that thereason she really began to like me right away was that I looked like one of heruncles -- which I didn't know was very flattering, but that's what she said. (laughs) She would say this at readings. I don't know. (laughs) I was kindof humiliated, but we talked a lot. I mean, she's somebody that used Spanishenormously, and she had a very heavy Spanish accent, though she was born here. And as someone once asked her, like, "When did your people come here?" And shesaid, "Well, about five hundred years ago." And -- (laughs) -- he was veryoffended. So, I'm -- you know, we started talking, because she was using a lotof Spanish and stuff -- and I don't know, she -- you know, we had such very 80:00different backgrounds. We sort of introduced ourselves to each other, and --she did ask me how come I never used Yiddish, and I thought that was sort of aninteresting (laughs) question, since it had never even occurred to me. I mean,I think I used two Yiddish words up until then. Like, in one poem I used theword "rebetsn [rabbi's wife]" and in the other poem I used "bashert[predestined]." So, I started thinking about it, and I started thinking aboutusing it in my poetry. I know I'm known sort of for that. I have very mixedfeeling about it, because I feel it's almost -- it's almost in opposition. Ifeel like poetry is something that you really want to just let go and let flow,and then see what it is, whereas in thinking about using Yiddish in it isalready an interruption of that to some degree, because it's an intellect-- to 81:00some degree, it's an intellectual act, it's not natural. But I did -- I haveplayed around with it. I have to say that I find it much easier -- and ithasn't been as visible -- I'm working now on a rather very long thing where itis quite visible. It's much easier to do into prose, because you don't havethat conflicting kind -- you do think much more about prose, and I also thinkabout characters and how they speak and so on. So, I am interested in that. But it's not easy. And it's not -- it's not natural. I know people like it alot. (laughs) And they think I do it all the time, but I don't. I mean, it'salmost rare. It has to click in some way. Because you can't just -- I mean,introducing Yiddish into a poem is not a neutral thing. It brings with it an 82:00enormous amount of baggage. And in some ways, that could be just totallydestructive of the poem you're trying to write, you know? So, it's a verycomplicated process. And there was a point, I think, when I was -- I mean, Ithink a lot of it was accelerated -- I took my first trip to Poland; it was in'83; it was the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And I wentwith my mother -- the only time she returned. And that had a profound effecton me, also. I think that also pushed me more towards trying to reclaim aYiddish legacy, because I was sort of very -- I was particularly moved by thecemeteries, which were -- the two larger cemeteries that I saw were in Łódźand in Warsaw. And that, I think, also pushed me, because in some ways, that 83:00trip and those cemeteries made very clear to me the Holocaust in a way that ithadn't been before. Because the tombstones reflected the life that had beensort of destroyed in a very concrete way. I mean, you -- it wasn't abstractwords; it wasn't a photograph; it was -- these were really burial places ofactual people and an actual life. And it was something -- I once said it waslike looking at a negative -- instead of looking at the photograph, you'relooking at the negative. And that was very profound. And all of thathappened almost at the same time I had just -- a couple of years before thatleft YIVO; I had just then met Gloria; you know, it was all sort of a -- thoseearly '80s years were very, very critical. In some ways, it was like acritical mass of things happening at one time. And it's hard to attribute this 84:00thing to that -- it was all -- it was all happening at once. And it was -- Iwas also -- my second book had come out; I was better known. People werepressing me: What should I read? What do you know? You know, and at thatpoint, I started reading about the Bund. I had never really read about theBund; I just sort of absorbed it, and I started reading real books about theBund. (laughs) Because I felt like I was like this ignorant messiah orsomething. (laughs) You know, that I couldn't just rely on my childhoodmemories about the Bund. I really wanted to know more about it, and I wantedto be more responsible and more responsive. And the same thing with the -- Imean, the Yiddi-- searching for Yiddish women writers was just great fun. Imean, it was very pleasurable to be able to find this stuff, and to say, "Well,here are some things." You know? So, that was, I think, the '80s. It was a 85:00mix of a lot of things, I think -- an integration, I think, of things that atthe time I really wasn't that conscious of, even. I was just kind of goingwith whatever happened to pop up at the -- and that was when I saw Aaron andSharon -- it was also probably around '81, '82. I'm not quite sure. Maybethey'd remember it better.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
CW: So, we were talking about in --
IK: Oh, the reading --
CW: -- when you were going up to the Yiddish Book Center.
IK: Yes. I read -- I remember -- I believe that that was the first time that
I read that my poem, "Etlekhe verter fun mame-loshn [A few words in the mothertongue]" -- which I think had been published, but I had never read it inpublic. I mean, you know, one of -- there's a really big difference betweenbeing brave on paper and brave in life. (laughs) And I remember -- this is --I repeat this story, because it's so true; it's totally true. I remembersitting there thinking -- there was this audience, and I'm thinking, Why did I 86:00have to say "lesbianke" four times in this poem? Like, wouldn't it have beengood enough to say it once? Why do I have to go up and say this now (laughs)four times? And I was really scared. I mean, literally, with -- people don'trealize, you know -- even now, people that experience and are afraid ofhomophobia -- I mean, your adrenaline goes, your heart rate goes, you're reallyscared. So, I read it. I did read it. And -- nothing happened. (laughs)In fact, if anything -- my experience with that poem has been that people reactmuch more to the word "khurve," which is "whore." I read that in a couple ofsynagogues and I thought the men were gonna faint when I said the word"khurve." I mean, they sort of -- I don't know what they think about"lesbianke," but -- yeah. But it -- I think -- my feeling was not off. I 87:00mean, I think it was a good audience or they didn't care or it was a moreprogressive audience or whatever -- that it was a really -- it was a difficulttime. And being out was difficult. I didn't have a choice about it. Itwasn't only that it was in my -- like, that poem, but it was in all my bios. Imean, this was, like, a principle that you had to write a bi-- in your bio, youhad to say that you were -- you just felt that that was part of -- part of youractivism was being very public, if that's what you were gonna do. And it wasdifficult. I mean, my mother hated it. My mother was very frightened of it.
CW: Do you want to talk about that at all, about her reaction?
IK: Well, she had a classic reaction, you know? She said to me -- the way
she put it was, "The world's not ready for this." She was -- I think she was-- I think she was frightened just from her own life experience, she wasfrightened, as a survivor. I think she also understood -- and she was right -- 88:00that she lived in a homophobic society and that she lived even in a homophobiccommunity. I mean, I was the -- I was the first person that was out -- I wasthe first one to do everything. I was the first one who got a PhD in thatgroup; I was the first one to come out. And I think she was very embarrassedby it. One of the things that I realized much later is, you know, when we cameout -- when we would come out as individuals, it was our choice; our parentsdidn't have much choice about it. You know, they had to just live with it. And they didn't choose the moment or the time or the explanation or whatever. But I think what -- ironically, I think what ended up happening is that morepeople had kids who had started coming out, and they ended up going to mymother. My mother became the wise person of how to deal with your gay child. (laughs) It was kind of funny. So, in some ways, eventually, it gave herstatus. (laughs) And I think she liked that. But it wasn't a happy -- you 89:00know, it was not a happy piece of information. She was very upset by it. Ithink she wanted me to stay away for a while. We had a lot of conflict aroundit. It was not an easy process. I think she came around. I mean, one ofthe things that I did when I went to Poland this summer was, I insisted thatthere were lesbian -- because I know what's going on over there -- that Iinsisted that the word "lesbian" be in my bio. And it was interesting -- inKraków, three young people came up to me, one of them in tears, just ecstaticthat I had done it, and that I actually -- I had talked about it. I mean, theyhad -- somebody had asked me even about my mother and stuff, but that I had beenstanding on a platform and openly talking about it. Now I don't -- I mean, Idon't feel threatened doing it right now. Maybe I should be. (laughs) Idon't know. But at the time, it was not an easy process to come out in theJewish community. And very often, I voluntarily was a token. I mean, I knew 90:00I was being used as a token. But I think that that's also part of theprocess. I think you allow yourself to be a token just so often, you know. But I think it's part of a process of people getting adjusted and having a tokenout there that they can -- that makes it easier for somebody else not to be atoken. So, yeah. It was not easy. And it's not fun being a token, either,so. (laughs) Yeah.
CW: I wanted to ask a little more about this process that you alluded to of
discovering some Yiddish female -- women writers -- Yiddish women writers. Canyou talk about how that worked?
IK: I'm trying to remember. Well, partly it worked by just looking at the
books that Sharon or Chana Pollack showed me. Chana Pollack was -- I met Chana 91:00up there originally, also. I don't know if you've interviewed her. You sh--
CW: Not yet.
IK: You've gotta. And Myra, too. Both of them. I mean, Myra was from
Hemshekh also, and Chana comes from a totally wacky back-- (laughs) differentbackground. So, that was part of the process. And sort of checking -- I dida lot of cross-checking with the encyclopedias of who was written up. Ofcourse, Korman's "Yidishe dikhterins [Yiddish women poets]," which was this"Yiddish Poets" that came out in 1929, was also a resource. And so, I did huntaround. And also, you just kind of poked around and found stuff. You know,like, I don't remember how I found Yente Serdatsky's -- I remember thinking thatsomebody alluded to her story -- the confession -- "Vide" -- they alluded to it,and it sounded to me like it might be a feminist story. It was just, like -- 92:00just something -- and I went and searched for it and read it. And I was right;it was a very feminist story. So, I translated it and we had it in "Bridges"-- we put it into "Bridges." So, that was -- it was very hit-or-miss, becauseI didn't have -- I was not an expert, first of all, in Yiddish literature tobegin with. But I mean, I was studying it and I was boning up on it, but Ididn't have the total grasp of it. And I certainly didn't know very much -- Ialso was interested in not only the writers; I was interested, like, in Bundactivists. And I started -- I have the complete -- I have a lot of Bundmaterial here, both in Yiddish and English. A lot of it is on the table overthere because of this project now. And so, I started going through "Doyeresbundistn," which is this three-volume -- you know, the translation is, I guess,"Generations of Bundists" -- of this -- incredible biographies of these people, 93:00and I started just looking at the women and who they were. So, I did, like --it was very gumshoe work, you know? It's grungy work. You just gotta turn alot of pages, look at a lot of indices, mark down every time somebody'smentioned, look them up. And this is before the internet, I mean, so it's alittle bit easier now, but -- so that's how I did it. I mean, I -- it was just hit-and-miss.
[BREAK IN RECORDING]
IK: I think I found out that Fradel Shtok had a collection of short stories,
which were -- which I was able to get through the National Yiddish Book Center,and I just started looking for feminist stories, and I found them. So, I mean,it was interesting. It was -- I never -- I don't feel like I'm an expert inthe field at all. I mean, in many ways, I've stopped doing it -- now. I'vehad sort of -- partly for personal reasons in the sense that I've hadresponsibilities -- for Judy and for my mother, and trying to teach at 94:00Barnard. I've been really overwhelmed. And I'm just getting back to stuffand trying to figure stuff out. I mean, the new wrinkle sort of in my life isthat when I was in Poland, some of my Polish came back -- because I hadn't beenusing it; I only had spoken Polish with my mother. And it was sort ofinteresting for me to start using it again. It's quite limited in the sensethat I never read in Polish. I mean, it didn't develop intellectually in anyway, so if it wasn't said in my mother's kitchen, I don't know it. But still,it was interesting for me to sort of have that pop back into my life in a way --in a stronger way than Yiddish ever was, because I did speak it at home formany, many, many years with my mother. And I have now a whole bunch of books-- yesterday I bought a -- when I was at Barnard for my class I went in and Igot this workbook in Polish. I sort of wanted to see if I could brush up on my 95:00Polish. So, I feel now a little bit -- you know, when I was in Poland, peoplewere pressing me to really sharpen and develop my Polish, and I said, "Well,what am I gonna do with my Yiddish?" And they don't know what to say tothat. (laughs) So, right now, at the moment, I sort of feel like I'm beingpulled in these two different directions, and frankly, I don't know where it'sgonna end up. I don't -- I don't know. I'm not sure. I think right now Iwant to finish what I'm working on, which is very much Yiddish-oriented, andthen maybe take a step back and think about what I'm doing. But it's aninteresting dilemma that I didn't have before I left. It never even occurredto me. But, you know, when you start using a language and you hear a language,you start wanting to -- you start incorporating it in some way, and so it wasvery difficult to sort of just push it out and pretend it's not there. We'll 96:00see. (laughs) Tune in next week. (laughs)
CW: Could you talk a little bit more about the motivation for looking for
these -- uncovering these women Yiddish writers?
IK: Well, for one thing -- I mean, just on a -- I'm a person who's interested
in history in general. I think we should have accurate history, and I think weshould look at people that have been erased, histories that have been erased. It's what we could call the history that's never taught. I mean, and thehistories that's never taught is very, very -- like, here in the United States,it's just -- could fill volumes -- does fill volumes. Other people havewritten it, but it's not the official history. So, there's that. And there's-- I feel like there's an erasure there. Because it's a kind of paradox. I 97:00mean, on the one hand, women in the Yiddish svive [scene] were very, very, veryactive. One of the things that I experienced when I -- it was interesting tome that when I started looking for Yiddish -- for women Bundists and I startedgoing through "Doyeres bundistn," I had one of those sort of Holocaust momentswhere I actually had to stop doing it. I don't know, I'd gone through maybefifteen, twenty -- like, the first ones. I just did it alphabetically. Ijust -- Okay, here's a woman, and I'm gonna read about her. Here's the nextone, and I'm gonna read -- I wasn't taking notes; I was just -- and it wasincredible to me, reading them, the amount of energy that they had inestablishing these schools, these libraries, these health centers, thesechildren things. I was just -- to the point that -- and I knew they had been 98:00all killed. I mean, and I knew it had all been wiped out. And it was like, Icouldn't do it. I mean, I had originally this idea that we would translate itand have a book of these women Bundists. I don't know, it's still an idea Ihaven't totally let go of, but at the time that I did it -- which was probablyabout ten, fifteen years ago, I had to just stop reading, 'cause I couldn't takeit. I just could not take the fact that they were all sort of wiped out,because there was so much that they did. And I feel like -- I mean, it's likeanything. I just -- with writers -- people -- on the one hand, women werediscriminated against; I think there's a double discrimination. Let me put itthis way -- and this is what I argue with -- argue in the introduction to "FoundTreasures" -- there's a double discrimination. Women did publish, and theyvery often did their own publishing or they were associated with some men andthey published, so they published work. They, however, were not sort of viewed 99:00in the same way, and were not read with the same seriousness as men writers, andthat could be seen in reviews and whatever. That was one. The other phase ofthat was the translation of Yiddish literature into English by the -- beginningwith, like, Irving Howe, and that totally erased women, so it was even worse inEnglish than it actually was in Yiddish. (laughs) So there's, like, a doublething going on. And I think -- I just think that that's horrendous. I mean,I think it's terrible. And I'm interested -- I'm very interested in thatperiod. I envy the interwar period in Poland. Mainly -- I don't romanticizeit. I know exactly what happened and what was going on and all the forces thatwere -- the terrible forces. But at the same time, I feel there was a kind of 100:00incredible energy there, and excitement of pos-- about the possibilities of whatJewish life could be that I really envy. And there was an interaction in --and so I'm very drawn to that period, and I want to know more about it. I feelthat it is my legacy. I mean, if I -- not wanting to, you know, muddle things,but you know, the Bund was always -- was very strongly, before the war,anti-Zionist, and I was raised -- I don't know if I was raised anti-Zionist,because already by the time I was conscious, Israel already existed and the Bundmade its peace with the fact that there was an Israel, but I never had theZionist idea that I was -- that my home was there. I always felt that my homewas in Poland. I felt that the home -- that my real home was that period, that 101:00sort of time -- geographic period of that time. And that's the loss that Imourn, and that's the home that I feel I lost. And that's where my legacyis. And so, I want to -- I want to, first of all, make sure that it getsremembered. I want to pass it on to other people. I think it's useful. Idon't think it's anachronistic. I don't think it's something -- you know, Ihope people are not gonna come just to think, Oh, this is a very nice hiatusfrom the horrible circumstances in which we're living in on Octobertwenty-second. I hope it'll inspire -- I don't expect them to become Bundists,but I hope it'll give people a way of looking at things differently. Becausethey lived in terrible times and we live in terrible times. They're notexactly the same, but I know we despair a lot. They didn't totally despair;they fought. And I think it's important. So, I -- I feel a -- I feel a kind 102:00of total debt to them, in some ways. I mean, working even on this brochurewith Danny Soyer has been very wonderful for me. It's been -- the only thing Idon't like about it is the pressure and the deadlines. I can't stand it. Butthe research and the putting it together has been just wonderful. I've lovedit. It's one of the best things I could have done. I feel like it's -- it'smy homage to them, and I'm willing to give up my time and my energy for it. Ivery much feel indebted to them. I feel my world view is indebted to them; Ifeel my writing is indebted to them. So, I want to -- I want others to see it,as well.
CW: So, just the event that you're talking about is the --
IK: October twenty-second, it's gonna be the anniversary of the founding of
the Bund, which was in 1897 -- the 120th anniversary. Founded in Vilna.
CW: I want -- you alluded to translation, and you've done some translation
103:00from Yiddish. Can you talk about how you came to the writers that -- I mean,to those translation projects and --
IK: Well, I wanted -- I mean, this is always the block. I mean, one of my
essays I wrote at one point -- and Clare used this as a quote -- like, "Mother,mother, I want to follow in your footsteps, but I don't understand a word thatyou're saying." And it's sort of (laughs) -- I sort of wanted them tounderstand what their mothers were saying. It was interesting, because, youknow, when I -- I think Yiddish translation has become more accepted and sort ofrespectable. At the time when I started translating, people really argued withme and sort of put it down and said, You're putting the final nail in thecoffin. And I felt, no. I felt that by translating, first of all, I made 104:00something accessible that was inaccessible and would remain inaccessible. Andin some cases, it actually inspired other people to learn Yiddish, by readingthe -- then they said, I want to read the original and I want to read more. What's not translated? So, I mean, there was a tension in -- when I firststarted doing that. I mean, I wasn't the only translator, so I don't want to-- but I did hear that from people, that I should be writing in Yiddish, Ishould be speaking Yiddish, I -- the last thing I should be doing istranslating; that's the nail in the coffin. And I don't agree with that. Ireally don't. I mean, I don't agree with that about anything. I purposely --I belong to websites that I get newsletters of international literature that'sbeing translated into English. I don't think enough stuff has been translated(laughs) into English. And I feel that there's -- it's a reality that peopledon't know Yiddish, and if you want them to understand and if you want them to 105:00appreciate -- no, it's not like the real thing. It never is. But it's eitheryou get this, or you get nothing. And I feel that a good translation -- it'snot the original -- gives you a lot. It may not give you a hundred percent,but it gives you a lot. And I think it's worth doing. I definitely thinkit's worth doing. I think more people should do it. And I wish more stuffwas available in English. I mean, I wish I could put stuff in my classroom. But I can't, unless it's translated. And then, that means that students remainignorant of it. I don't think that that's a good option, you know? So, thatwas sort of my motivation. And people were in some ways indirectly saying, I'dlike to read this stuff, but I can't. I mean -- and I understood that. Iunderstood that. It's not -- you know, I'm very restless, and I get bored very 106:00fast, and I move from thing to thing, and I don't stick -- I mean, it's not like-- I've translated -- I don't know if I would totally call -- I guess I'd callmyself a translator, but it's not like it's a profession for me, any more thanputting Yiddish into my poetry is the whole thing of my poetry. You know,these are just things that enter your life. They settle; they move away; theycome back. You know, it's not a straight line, by any means.
CW: What was the impact for you personally of starting to read these books in
Yiddish -- these writers, you know, sort of in this period that you're talking about?
IK: I was just very taken aback. I mean, I was surprised at the content, I
was surprised at the feminism. I shouldn't have been -- I mean, that was --feminism was very much in the air, so to speak. Countries were giving women 107:00their vote. I mean, people -- everybody was, you know, sort of involved init. And it also -- so partly, it made me realize to what degree -- and Ialready knew this about American history or any other history -- the historythat I had gotten was incomplete. But that's not surprising. You know, I tryto tell my students -- you know, I said, "Nobody is ever all right. They'renever completely right." And you want everybody to be right -- you look back,you know, on the second wave and they did this, and you look back on thesuffragettes and they did that that was wrong, or they didn't do something andthey should have. Nobody's ever right -- you know, nobody gets it all right. So, I accept that. I think -- I accept that the Bund vision, as it wasarticulated, had its limitations. I mean, to begin with, Yiddish was not thelanguage of all the Jewish people. (laughs) Just to begin there. Socialist 108:00principles, maybe, yes, but not (laughs) Yiddish. So, I think I'm matureenough to sort of accept that and just sort of say, No, they were wrong onthat. You know? But that doesn't mean that they were wrong on everything,and it doesn't mean that they -- you have to throw 'em out. So, I think themain thing was that I was both surprised at how much I found and also upset athow much was erased and ignored, and also about the limitations of possibility-- you know, opportunities. I mean, somebody like Hinde now is really veryexpert -- I mean, she's much more expert on this field than I am. She's donean enormous amount of research, really wonderful research. And I'm reallylooking forward to seeing her. We're going to spend a day talking about herdissertation. But I mean, she's somebody who's really plugged away atsomething in a very, very focused way. I've never done that. I did that for 109:00maybe nine months for the introduction of "Found Treasures," but it's notanything I'm -- you know, I'm not invested. I never wanted to really be a scholar.
CW: I wanted to ask you about the languages that you know or have known --
and, you know, being Yiddish, Swedish, Polish, English -- and what thesedifferent languages represent or mean to you personally.
IK: Well, Swedish is gone. I mean, Swedish was gone within, like, six
months, completely -- which is amazing, given that I still have -- I have on mybookshelf -- I have my Swedish psalm book, 'cause we used to say prayers inclass. So, I still have my Swe-- but I -- and even in the early '60s, when Isaw my first Ingmar Bergman movie, it didn't even sound familiar. I thought Iwould recognize stuff, but I didn't. So, that went very -- and it's notsurprising, because I -- even in Sweden, the fact that I could master it --because nobody in the house spoke Swedish; I was the only one. And here -- 110:00certainly, once we came here, I mean, I was totally cut off. So, it wasgone. Period. I think they mean -- I think, like I said before, I thinkPolish has sort of -- I don't know, maybe I regressed a little bit, because I soassociate it with my mother and sort of my childhood. Even though we talked --way into my twenties and thirties, we still spoke -- maybe not consistentlyPolish, but a lot of Polish. And I just -- and my mother had dementia, and soin the last, I don't know, seven, eight years, she didn't talk -- she had had astroke; she couldn't talk that much. She could talk a little bit. She alwaysresponded. I could tell just in her facial expressions that when I spoke toher in Polish, she just responded very differently. And she was very fluent inEnglish. I mean, she had a job as an archivist and -- so there's somethingabout this last trip to Poland and everybody pushing me (laughs) on Polish -- my 111:00broken Polish -- that's, I think, shifted something for me, and I'm not surewhat yet. Partly also because I've been so busy with this Bund thing that Ihaven't even had time to process the trip, because the second I came back, I wasdeep into this immediately, and now I'm also deep into school. So, it's like,I'm waiting for this thing to go to the printer, and then I'll only have school,I think -- I hope -- to try to figure out -- I mean, I have a lot of Polishbooks here suddenly. At the same time, I got the new Polish -- I got the newEnglish-Yiddish dictionary. I mean, it's just -- I don't know. It's a bigmishmash right at the moment. Though I have to say, I think English remainscentral. Sort of -- that's my core. What this other stuff means, I don'tknow. I really don't know. I bought a lot of -- one of the nice things Ilike to do is to get bilingual books, both in Yiddish and now in Polish. Ibrought a number of bilingual books home. I have, like, poetry which is in 112:00Polish on one side and English on the other. And that's sort of an interestingway, also, for me to think about poetry and look at things. So, I don't reallyknow. I feel like at the very old age of seventy-six, I'm at a linguisticcrossroad. I don't know what -- (laughs) where to go somehow. It was very --I mean, I was in Poland for almost four weeks. It's a very long time, youknow? So, it was interesting. It's interesting. I don't know. I don'thave an answer for you -- except that the Swedish is totally gone, and the othertwo, they're hanging around. (laughs)
CW: I want to circle back to the connection that you mentioned between, you
know, Yiddish and the fact that -- you know, people often draw a connectionbetween -- you know, talk about queer Yiddish or, you know, the involvement of alot of LGBTQ people in the Yiddish field. Do you have a theory on that or a 113:00take on that?
IK: I don't really -- I've thought about it and I've sort of watched it. I
mean, the fact that so many gays are in the music -- for example, if you go upto KlezKanada -- I mean, the klezmer phenomenon is -- a lot of it is very gayand queer. And it's -- I don't know. I think that one of the things --though I -- I do think there's a trend within this now where people are moreobservant than they were originally when this whole thing started. I thinkthere's a new kind of element of more observant Yiddishists, which used to be asort of -- you couldn't have it, you know? But I think on the whole, the 114:00original, I think, attraction -- there were two attractions, I think, that theYiddish and secularism -- specifically Yiddish secularism, I think, is -- morethan just the language, it was the draw -- was that I think there was --American Jewish communities are so shut down on certain politics, especiallyaround Israel and stuff, that I think this created a space where in fact theycould associate with a legitimate Jewish, Yiddish, identifiable, not self-hatingphenomenon that was not necessarily anti-Israel but not strongly Israel-centeredand not strongly Israel -- you know, kind of -- bound. I don't know what wordto use. And it also -- I think, at the time, before there was a lot of -- I 115:00mean, when sort of gay synagogues sprouted, but before, it became a Jewish placewhere you could go to with acceptance. And I think there is something about akind of rebelliousness about the whole Yiddish -- sort of there's an upstartkind of feeling -- that I think gays tapped into. I think it's kind ofinteresting that they tapped into a kind of joyous -- I don't mean this now ashappy, but that they tapped into literature and music and they didn't totallybury themselves in the Holocaust. I mean, there -- it seems to me that thereare sort of multiple American Jewish identities. One is the Zionist identity-- that I'm a Jew because I'm a Zionist, and I don't have to do anything else, 116:00but I can support Israel and I'm a Jew. And then, there's the observant one --the one that's -- you know, you go to the synagogue. And the secularists -- Imean, when my -- when I first wrote my essay, "Secular Jewish Identity:Yiddishkayt in America" in "Tribe of Dina," which was, like, in, I don't know,'83, '84, people came up to me and said, I didn't realize I was a secularist. I mean, it was not an identifiable -- whereas, like, in interwar Poland,"veltlekhkayt [secularism, lit. "worldliness"]" was, like, the word. (laughs)Here, people didn't even know that -- they couldn't even say -- they didn't say-- I didn't know I was secular -- I mean, Thank you for the essay, I didn't knowI was secular. So, I think there was that. But there was also this otheridentity which had to do with the Holocaust, and it had to do with eitheridentifying yourself as a survivor or identifying yourself as the first 117:00generation or second and now third, where your identity is Jewish because ofyour connection to the Holocaust. And people didn't want that either. Thisother thing was music, literature -- and the literature -- it wasn't alwayshappy music, it wasn't always happy literature, but that's the affirmative -- Imean, the arts, I think, are very affirming -- affirming, even when they'redepressing (laughs) if you know what I mean. So, I think there was that option-- that became an option of identification, in a way that Bundism -- sort ofcultural -- was. And I think together with that history of feeling thatdoikayt [Bundist concept of "hereness"] -- you know, hereness -- is somethingthat's here, now, was very appealing. In some ways -- if you think about it in 118:00the '80s, by skipping back two generations, they were into interwar Poland. They were sort of tapping into that. I don't know. None of that is veryconscious, but when I thought about it, I really -- I do think there are thesevery big forms of identifications that are not culturally necessarily bound thatI think Yiddish does provide that identification for people. And they don'thave to go to synagogue, they don't have to necessarily support Israel, theydon't have to necessarily attach themselves to the Holocaust, but they can stillidentify very strongly as Jews and feel like they have a place and a space and ahistorical time. So, I think that that was one of the appeals. I think itwas -- and because they weren't, to begin with, welcome in any of these otherplaces to begin with, that was a good place to go. You know, 'cause -- so they 119:00created their own space, in some ways. And that's in effect what we did. Wecreated -- wherever we were rejected, we created our own space. You know, ifYiddish institutions didn't want gays and lesbians, then we created Yiddish gayinstitutions. (laughs) It was that simple.
CW: I want to ask a specific question about -- not -- sort of as a sidebar
here, but about the Yiddish Book Center. When you first encountered it, whatwas your first impression when you went up there?
IK: Well, I -- it was all a lot of books. (laughs) And they were all
unorganized. (laughs) And Sharon was looking for women -- I don't evenremember. It was just -- I didn't -- it was just -- you know, he had all thesestories that he was running around picking up books from places. (laughs) I 120:00certainly didn't think -- I mean, who knows. It's like the gay and lesbianmovement -- I mean, we didn't know where it was gonna go. It was like a Bund-- thirteen people get together, and then they take over the world. You seethe beginning of -- I mean, I always tell my students -- I mean, my studentsalways -- when they want to talk about activism, are always worried that they'renot -- you know, Well, we only have four or five people. And I tell them,"Don't worry about that." You know, four or five people can do a lot. Andyou don't know where you're gonna end up. And I think -- I thought it was aproject. I didn't think it was gonna fail; I didn't think it was gonnasucceed. I thought it was another project that somebody was working on. Ithought it was an interesting -- I mean, I think it made me conscious, also,about the fact that -- I also -- I have that whole bookcase over there now ofYiddish books that I don't know what to do with. I'm thinking of -- you know,as I said when you walked in, I gotta get rid of these books, 'cause they'redriving me nuts. But what to do with the Yiddish books is a whole other 121:00thing. Some of them came from the National Yiddish Book Center and they may goback to the National Yiddish Book Center. So no, I didn't -- I mean, I thoughtit was an interesting project. It made me very conscious of something I hadalready started being conscious of -- vaguely -- what was gonna happen to all ofthis. I mean, I think for decades, I just took for granted that everything wasgonna be exactly as it was in the '50s, and that Chaim Grade, who lived in myneighborhood, would come down the street, and I would bump into him, and the"Forverts" would come out every day -- the Yiddish "Forverts" -- I just assumed(UNCLEAR) was gonna be there. And then, one day I woke up and realized half ofit was already gone and the other half was fading fast. So, I think that wasanother indication to me that there was a real problem. Did I know it was 122:00gonna succeed? No. And I didn't necessarily think it was gonna fail,either. I just thought it was a project. And he did incredible. (laughs)
CW: Yeah. Well, I want to just look here to see if there's anything else I
particularly wanted to ask you about, but are there things that have -- storiesthat have come up that I might not know to ask or things that you want to add towhat -- all of this we've been talking about?
IK: No. The only thing that's been a big part of my life that we haven't
touched on -- which isn't directly connected to it, though I think in some ways,it is -- is that I was -- I did teach, and I may start again next semester, forten years at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. And I always sort ofconsidered that part of -- I don't know where the desire came to do that. It's 123:00something that I really love doing, and it -- you know, it made me see andopened up a whole part of sort of American justice system and society. But Ifelt it was very much in keeping sort of with my Bundist connection, even thoughit had nothing to do with Yiddish or Jews necessarily, or anything else. Butit did have a lot to do with fairness and justice. And so, I don't know. Itnever -- it doesn't come up, because it doesn't -- it seems so out of the way,but I think it was a very important part of my life. I hated to give it up,but it's too far and I had too many obligations and --
CW: What did you teach?
IK: I taught women's studies and English and literature. They had a -- they
still do -- they have a college granting degree program. And I came in whenthey had a master's program, and then they stopped that, and then I went intothe college program -- and liked doing it a lot. At Barnard, I only teach -- I 124:00teach Jewish women's courses. That's sort of my niche; that's what I'msupposed to teach. So, I had more freedom to sort of teach different thingswhen I was up there. And I just -- I think it's very important to alwaysremember these people and not -- I mean, they're so invisible that -- so, that'sabout the only thing that was a major -- that I thought -- I'm putting a lot oftime and effort.
CW: I'm curious about your students and what you see as sort of the future for --
IK: You mean at Barnard?
CW: I'm just -- I mean, you have students in various contexts, but I'm
thinking -- sort of, I guess, focusing on the Yiddish field, what you see sort 125:00of happening now -- trends or the future?
IK: You know, I don't really get students that much around Yiddish, because I
teach mainly -- I mean, Agi's the person to really talk about this. And also-- I don't know -- did you talk to Paula Teitelbaum? Yeah. And my -- I'vetaught some stories in translation in my courses. I teach American Jewishwomen writers from 1900 till the present, and I teach three courses insequence. And especially in the first part, I taught -- I teach a number ofshort stories, translated from "Found Treasures" and a couple of other places,that are from that period, because I consider them part of American Jewishliterature. And they're usually -- and they're probably the only contacts thatsome of these students have with anything Yiddish, and it's in English. (laughs) And so, I don't know. Sometimes I get -- some of Agi's students come 126:00into my courses. They're not -- I find my students incredibly ignorant aboutsecularism. I had a very -- I mean, to them, Jewishness is observance, andprobably Israel, though we don't get into it -- I try not to get into it toomuch, because it's so -- such a knotted thing, and it's not appropriatenecessarily for the books that we're reading. But I'll give you an example. One of the books that I teach is Amy Bloom's "Away." I don't know if you'veread it. It's a sort of very strongly feminist -- she wrote it recently; it's,like, two or three years old -- feminist story -- immigrant story -- sort of inthe '20s, I think. Yeah, it's in the '20s. And it's about a woman -- it's animmigrant woman's story. And it's about a woman who survives a pogrom and she 127:00loses her husband and her family and her kid. And she's very observant, butshe comes to New York and she gets involved in this whole Yiddish theater scene,which is the whole first part of the book. And basically, then she leaves,because somebody tells her that her daughter survived, and then she wants to getback to Russia. So, she goes -- does this trek across the United States, andshe's gonna get to Russia via California. So, it was very interesting to methat my students were very concerned about whether she gave up her Jewish belief-- or her Jewish faith. And there are, like, two episodes in the book whereshe sort of says either a prayer suddenly or something about God -- just, like, 128:00two. And they were totally fixated on these two episodes. And the firstseventy-five pages -- which is about the Yiddish theater, and where thecharacters speak only Yiddish -- was never mentioned. Because they didn't seethat as kind of Jewishness. I mean, it was mind-boggling to me. (laughs) Notcompletely, because I've come across -- but that's a very good indication of --that they saw more significance in those two outbursts of, "Oh my God" or sayinga prayer for it -- maybe it was a Kaddish because there was a body -- I don'tremember. But it was just very small, compared to this entire time that --when she comes here, she embeds herself in the Yiddish-speaking community. Andso, when I first came to Barnard, my very first semester, I had a student -- and 129:00I was totally unknown to them -- who had an argument with me about how anybodycould be Jewish and not go to synagogue. And that's a very prevalent idea. They don't really understand what secular Jewishness is. They know the word"secular" and they associate it with non-Jewishness. You become secularizedwhen you become non-- you know, when you're a non-Jew, you're secular. Butthey don't understand that there's another way of identifying. And that's verydepressing. And I feel that one of the -- I feel worried about the observantend of what's happening with Yiddish is gonna reinforce that in some way. Idon't know whether it will or not, but that worries me a little bit. Because Ifeel like it should be viewed as a separate thing. So, I don't think my 130:00students know very much. And they -- in fact -- I mean, I think Jewisheducation is very appalling, and a lot of my students have had twelve years ofJewish education and their ignorance is just -- about Jewishness -- is, like,unbelievable. I had a class where I asked the students -- they're very -- allinterested -- incredibly -- in the Holocaust. They've been to Israel endlesstimes. But when they read something that involved the Holocaust and I askedthem -- this was a mixed class. There were two non-Jews, ten Jews of mixedbackgrounds, and at least six or seven with complete Jewish educations -- twelvebefore Barnard. And I asked them what event and what was the date that WorldWar II started. Not one -- not one person in that class -- Jew, non-Jew, 131:00anybody -- knew. They knew about camps. They knew about -- they knew thenumber six million. But when I asked them what was the largest Jewishcommunity that was destroyed in World War II, they didn't know. So, they don'tknow who the six million are. I'm just appalled. And I don't know what theireducation is if they don't know when the war star-- I mean, if they don't knowwhen the war started and who the Jews were, and they just know a number, sixmillion, it's just -- not good. (laughs) It's scary. It scares me. But Idon't think they're very much different than any -- if you went into a publicschool, I think -- history education is just at one of its lowest low, I think,in the country, so maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on them. I don't know. ButI was really stunned. I was really stunned. 132:00
CW: Well, I want to break and look at some books and photos and things.
IK: Oh, sure.
CW: But I just want to thank you first of all --
IK: Oh!
CW: -- for taking this time --
IK: Oh, well, thank you. They were good questions.