Professor Ber Kotlerman Translation, Episode 7:

Eitan: Welcome to the MetaShtetl, this is Eitan Binstock. I inherited the Yiddish language and culture from my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and I am interested in exploring the way it’s been flourishing in the 21st century. Specifically, how technology is being used to spread and proliferate Yiddish worldwide. Before I welcome my next guest, please note the full translations of the podcast can be viewed on my blog themetashtetl.com, feel free to follow along, and thank you for coming along on this adventure with me. And now for my next guest, Professor Ber Kotlerman, Professor of Yiddish Studies at Bar Ilan University, as we switch to the language we both hold dear. Professor Kotlerman, our honored guest, thank you very much for participating in the podcast. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your personal history. 

Professor Kotlerman: Greetings, my name is Berl Kotlerman, I am a professor of Yiddish Studies at Bar Ilan University which is in Israel, I come from a family of Yiddish-speaking refugees who fled the Nazis in the Second World War to central Asia, and after that in the late 1940s they settled in the Orient on the Eastern Russian border, and that is how a received my Yiddish inheritance from my grandparents.

Eitan: What is your main work? Can you talk a little about your profession? 

Professor Kotlerman: I already said I am a professor of Yiddish studies in Bar Ilan University in Israel, which means that Yiddish has become my main language, though I studied first of all Hebrew literature, but this is the luck I’ve had in this life that my profession and my love for Yiddish landed together, and I can live with and from Yiddish.

Eitan: Does the Yiddish language or culture have a connection to your profession? Or do you feel that Yiddish and your career occupy separate channels in your mind and your life? 

Professor Kotlerman: Truth be told, I didn’t choose Yiddish as my profession, one could say Yiddish chose me, and I am truly grateful that it happened that way in my life; that I can work with Yiddish and have an income from that. That is a great joy.

Eitan: The best is when one works at what one loves. What role did Yiddish play in your childhood years? Did you learn Yiddish outside the home as well? 

Professor Kotlerman: Yiddish played a specific role in my life. My grandparents always had in the home Yiddish newspapers and journals and to that, my mother worked in the Yiddish newspaper called the Bijobijaner Shtern, the local newspaper, meaning Yiddish was always next to me and even though as a small child I did not so much show interest in Yiddish, later, when we started learning Yiddish for beginners in middle school, I understood that I don’t need to learn it because I understood all of it and I could read, and from then my interest grew strongly.   

Eitan: I want to explain a little about the Bijobidzaner city for those who are unfamiliar with it. In Russia, Jews did not assimilate the way they did among other groups, so the Jewish religion was forbidden but that did not wok to assimilate them them, and this bothered the Russians very much. So Jews were sent away to a city called BijoBijan, in Siberia, and Jews traveled there with great hope that they will be able to live in peace and build a community there. But it was a frozen place, no agriculture, no infrastructure or buildings, nothing to eat, no contact with other cities. Among them, there were those who wanted to hold out until the Redemption, but many were very disappointed and angry. Meanwhile, important writers and intellectual leaders were traveling the world raising money for Russian Jews and for BijoBijan. But in 1952, all the intellectual leaders were murdered. Bijobijan remained a small town for many years, but th hope that it would be a special society ended in sadness. Today there are still a few Jews there, because not all Jews abandoned it. I have never met anyone who had lived, there, very interesting. What other lnaguages do you speak, and where did you learn them? 

Professor Kotlerman: As for the languages I know, I can speak Hebrew quite well, and of course Russian in the family, and that way it came to be that I teach in three points of languages – Russian Yiddish and Hebrew. And I partake in my mind the whole time a type of translation from one language to the second and third, and in various opportunities I always speak other languages, such as English and French, but overall Yiddish Russian and Hebrew are my main languages. 

Eitan: Do you enjoy Yiddish? Why and When? Do you have a favorite word or expression? 

Professor Kotlerman: It goes without saying that I get a lot of pleasure from Yiddish, one can say daily. Both as a teacher, as a reader, as a creator – I write stories and poems. Besides that, I like certain diminutives: little sweet one, small one, from these [terms] I get separate pleasure.

Eitan: Do you think these days the general interest in learning Yiddish is growing or shrinking? Do you use technology to reach people all over the world in Yidish? 

Professor Kotlerman: I do not feel that the interest in Yiddish is become larger or smaller. It is similar to waves in the sea: sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Of course, the times are changing, the old generation – people who spoke Yiddish at home, or who learned in the Yiddish-speaking institutions – is slowly going away. There are new forces coming: the technologies are doing their jobs. People who were once sitting at the edge of the world now make use of various applications, members of Yiddish-speaking communities, one must adapt to new times but I can see that Yiddish lives, and is flourishing, and I don’t believe that such an amazing great culture which is without exaggeration a great volume of literature can suddenly disappear from the world. Yiddish will live on for many many more years.