I did teach, and I may start again next semester, for ten years at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. And I always sort of considered that part of … - Irena Klepfisz

if you’re ever interested in looking at what happened in the women’s movement, in the lesbian movement, around Israel, you should read Yours in Struggle, which has an article by Barbara Smith, an African-American lesbian, Minnie Bruce Pratt, about being a white Southern lesbian, and Elly Bulkin who does an entire survey of what went on around Israel and Zionism on magazines, on collectives. I mean, it was a breaking. It was one of those issues that just broke people up completely.

Emphasizing the seemingly more pious stories of Sholem Aleykhem and Peretz, stressing Jewish passivity over action, obedience to tradition over rebellion (and therefore upholding observance), many supporters of Yiddish and Yiddish culture have wrenched yidishkayt out of the active, political and radical context in which it flourished and thereby neutralized and depoliticized it.

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.