Repeatedly, I find that I am preoccupied not with countering anti-Semitism, but with trying to prove that anti-Semitism exists, that it is serious, a… - Irena Klepfisz

the Bund was started with 13 people in a crummy attic and Vilna and it became a mass movement. And I know it from my own experience of what happened in the lesbian feminist movement and the women’s movement, somebody like Gloria Anzaldúa, who’s now being taught in women’s studies classes. Audre Lorde, who’s being taught in women’s studies classes. And we started, you know, Conditions and Persephone Press. Kitchen Table, This Bridge Called My Back, I mean, that was just started by two or three people. You know, and it’s sort of amazing what happened. And who would have predicted it? They didn’t predict it, they just wanted to do it! They wanted to publish something and so they did.

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. In public school, we did Easter -- 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 the shule, it was like the rest of the world didn't exist.

You’re sort of one person at one moment and another person at another moment. I suppose the only time that you’re ever really complete is when you’re by yourself or in an environment in which you’re not hiding. In the gay community, I was not hiding my Jewishness. Not everybody was interested in my Yiddish work, but nobody was hostile to it. But in the Jewish world, I had to be shut down in certain ways.