The '50s were so culturally different than what -- anything that we have now. I mean, there was no bridge between that public school and that shule. … - Irena Klepfisz

It wasn't an age in which people explained a lot of things to kids. Really. I mean, we're so careful now about, is this gonna traumatize the child and all of this. Nobody even thought about it.

I very much admired the people that went on the Birthrights and interrupted them, the trips, and insisted on asking questions and then were forced off. I think that was just great. I have to say, I think there is, it’s not only anti Zionism, I think it’s a general, that there’s a very young generation now, and I don’t know where they are culturally or secularly, but I think politically that they have stopped being afraid of the Jewish establishment and they have refused to accept what they’re being told. And they’re challenging. And that, I think, is just wonderful. Because they don’t want to say the Holocaust is untouchable and you can’t compare anything and blah, you know that. And they don’t want to say you can’t let me talk about Palestinians, you know, I’m going to talk about them, I’m not going to be silenced.

One of the things that I did when I went to Poland this summer was, I insisted that there were lesbian -- because I know what's going on over there -- that I insisted that the word "lesbian" be in my bio. And it was interesting -- in Kraków, three young people came up to me, one of them in tears, just ecstatic that I had done it, and that I actually -- I had talked about it.