Let us not take the attitude that because of our politics we must remain pure and not mix with the Jewish rabble-the mainstream. Let us be as willing… - Irena Klepfisz

I think Yiddish is something the Ashkenazi Jews really turn to to help them define themselves in terms that existed before the war rather than in relationship to the Holocaust or Israel. They're pointing to the issues of language and what language can express and mean and especially if it's a language that is a national language. I think writers have an important function here, and I think some of them are accepting it. (GP: Writing in Yiddish?) IK: Well, at least talking about Yiddish or using a little bit of Yiddish even to make their English less mainstream, to make their English more Jewish. People are beginning to study. I think these small steps are significant. (GP: So in some way you're memorializing that tradition.) IK: I'm hoping that I'm not so much memorializing it as taking it into the present…Through my writing and through encouraging other people-not just writers. I want to "activate it," so that Jews will feel that they're connected to this culture, that they can claim it as their legacy, their heritage. It's what shaped their parents-well, at this point, I'd have to say their Eastern European grandparents and ancestors.

I experienced a lot of homophobia when I came out, around 1974

A child, of course, assumes that her world is the whole world.