Eydish iz mayn mame-lshun (Yiddish is my native language) with Avi Hoffman

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcript

Announcer (00:06):

You are connected and you are listening to specifically for seniors, the podcast for those in the Remember When Generation. Today's podcast is available everywhere you listen to podcasts and with video at specifically for seniors YouTube channel. Now, here's your host, Dr. Larry Bars.

Larry (00:39):

It was just a few months ago that neo-Nazis and white supremacists paraded in front of Disney World in Orlando, spreading anti-Semitic messages. There's outbreaks of anti-Semitism on college campuses increase in anti-Semitism in large cities throughout the United States, but amidst all that Yiddish languages making a comeback due to our guest today on specifically for seniors, Avi Hoffman was recently awarded Congressional recognition, was invited to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis was inducted into the Bronx Jewish Hall of Fame for his lifetime work, advancing Jewish culture, Yiddish Kite and Holocaust awareness through the charity. He founded Yiddish Kite Initiative, Inc. As an actor. He was nominated for a New York Drama Desk award for his Yiddish language Betrayal of Willie Lowman in Death of a Salesman. He's best known for his two Jewish trilogy, his award-winning one-Man shows on tv. He was featured as SSID Raskin in the Stars TV series, magic City, as well as on Netflix, bloodline, A and E's, the Glades. And on NBC series, law and Order. He starred in the film festival favorite you will Not Play Wagner and the International Award-winning Yiddish short films, Shahida and Boxed. And in the motion picture, the imported bridegroom. He was seen in the PBS documentary. They came for good a history of the Jews in the United States. Avi has performed all over the world, has numerous acting and directing credits, and received multiple awards and nominations. Avi, welcome to specific for the F seniors. It's a pleasure and honor to have you on. Well,

Avi Hoffman (02:46):

Thank you. After that introduction, I'm not sure what more I can say. It's

Larry (02:50):

Okay. So we'll end the podcast now, and that'll

Avi Hoffman (02:53):

Be, thank you for having me, and all the best.

Larry (02:58):

There is so much to talk about, but can you tell us a little bit about your family history?

Avi Hoffman (03:08):

I'm a child of Holocaust survivors, which in this particular time is triggering an enormous amount of PTSD for me on many levels. My father was from the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and ended up in Auschwitz. He survived Auschwitz. My mother was born in Siberia and ended up in the DP camps after the war coming to America in 49. And ended up becoming my founding partner of the organization because really everything I know about Judaism came from them. And my mother was professor of Yiddish language and Jewish culture at Columbia University for 25 years. She was a journalist in the Yiddish Forward newspaper. She's an award-winning playwright and has authored seven books. So I grew up in the Bronx. I was born in the Bronx, my mama lotion. My mother tongue was Yiddish. I spoke Yiddish first, and then I learned English.

Avi Hoffman (04:21):

When I went to public school. I always wanted to perform from the time I was four years old, I was already doing shows in my little Yiddish school. When I was eight, I did, I played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof at the age of eight in a children's production in the community center in the Bronx. By the time I was 10, I was working professionally in the Yiddish Theater in New York and the folks being there. And then at the age of 11, my parents decided to move to Israel. So I grew up in Israel. I learned Hebrew within six months to a year. I was fluent. I sound like an Israeli. When I speak Hebrew I grew up there. I did theater, I did television. I did film. And I left in 1977 at the age of 19 to come back to the United States, get my degree and pursue my career, which I have done ever since.

Avi Hoffman (05:24):

My parents came back after that. My my life has been very, very blessed and very full. I have done hundreds, thousands of performances all over the world. But I realized, my mother and I realized about seven years ago that there was an enormous need within not only the Jewish community, but also in the non-Jewish community to understand Judaism from a cultural perspective. You know, you've got, you've got your religion, you have everything from ultra Orthodox to atheism within the Jewish people, including Jewish Buddhists, boo Jews, and you know, I mean, there are so many ways that Jews can express themselves religiously or faith-based or not. You have Zionism and the love of the state of Israel, which unfortunately today is once again fighting a horrible war against terrorists who are dedicated to the death of the Jewish people. But, but the biggest element of Judaism that my mother and I were, were looking at was the culture of the Jewish people dating back thousands of years.

Avi Hoffman (07:00):

I taught a course at the University of Miami called Yiddish Theater, the Foundation of Modern Culture. And my basic premise and hypothesis was that as you go back in time and you look at the contributions of the Jewish people to the world in all fields, so if you go back to the book of books, right, the greatest book ever written is the Old Testament, and it's violent, and it's Shakespeare. I mean, Shakespeare took a lot of his themes from the Bible and reinterpreted them for his time. Once you start looking at what we have given the world, you realize that most people don't know this. They don't think of it that way. So whether it's the thousand years of Yiddish language, which helped to create the Yiddish Theater, which then helped to create Broadway, there was no Broadway before there was Yiddish theater. So the Yiddish Theater created Broadway.

Avi Hoffman (08:12):

The Yiddish Theater created Hollywood. The Yiddish, the Yiddish language was responsible for what was mainstream music by Mere bi Shane is the, was the biggest hit in the world comedy. You can't even talk about comedy without seeing that Jerry Seinfeld today, or Borat is an extension of the comedy that was developed back in the 1880s and moved itself all the way to what we now see, what we think of as standup comedy. Needless to say, food and the legal profession. I mean, there are so many contributions, cultural contributions of the Jewish people to the world, to the mainstream world that my mother and I decided there needed to be an organization dedicated specifically to bringing this enormous mountain of culture to not only the Jewish people who have forgotten or don't remember or never knew. I'm sure I could ask you whether you ever heard of.

Larry (09:32):

No, I have not.

Avi Hoffman (09:34):

Right? And don't feel bad. You are not the only one. Most people have no idea who he was, but he was up for the Nobel Prize in literature with Isaac Behe singer Isaac Behe singer won and became Isaac Behe singer. Ude was forgotten. So not only the Jews, but the non-Jews. And in the last year or so, we realized that anti-Semitism is on the rise in such a horrific way that I never imagined. I would see in my lifetime that our organization needs to not only bring the culture to the forefront, but also we need to fight antisemitism through the cultural aspects of our people. If you learn about someone, if you know about someone, it's much harder to hate them.

Larry (10:41):

Like many Jewish kids who grew up in the late thirties, early forties, my parents and grandparents spoke Yiddish when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about. So we learned enough for survival and to figure out what was going on in our lives and what was about to happen. But there was no real effort to teach us Yiddish. That was different in your family?

Avi Hoffman (11:08):

Well, yes. You know, again, my parents survived the Holocaust. Your parents and grandparents naturally wanted to assimilate into American culture. This is a natural progression for every people. Italians who came to America in the 1880s or 1890s, their children spoke a little bit of Italian, you know, a few words in Yiddish, I'm sure. They knew how to cook some of the, the foods by the time it got to the grandchildren, there was no Italian language left. And maybe a little bit of, you know, pasta. But interestingly enough, that was a natural progression in my world. I'm first generation American, so my parents being survivors felt that they had to teach me what Hitler tried to murder and destroy, which was the Jewish, not only the Jewish people, but everything, Jewish literature, Jewish poetry, Jewish music, Jewish theater. He wanted to burn all the Jewish books. So it, it, it it, what's fascinating is that today in the world, there is an enormous renaissance of Yiddish language. And that's because the fourth generation and the fifth generation want to know what it is. They don't even know what it is. Your grandchildren probably never heard Yiddish.

Speaker 4 (12:46):

True.

Avi Hoffman (12:47):

So, but they know that it exists and they think, wow, what is that? That's a Jewish thing. I'm Jewish, I don't know anything about it. I wanna know more. So my mother who taught at Columbia University for 25 years, when she started, she had four students in her class. By the time she retired, she had four classes, beginners, intermediate Advanced, and Jewish culture. And all four of her courses were filled with 80 students each.

Avi Hoffman (13:22):

So there is a natural progression of interest to come back to the culture, and that's kind of where we're at. Yiddish is a little unique in the sense that half of the Yiddish speaking population of Europe was murdered. 6 million Yiddish speaking Jews in Europe were killed among them. Writers and poets and playwrights and singers and, and composers and lyricists and directors and actors and so, and educators, professors, doctors. So the Yiddish world was decimated in the 1940s. So you had your natural progression, like you natural assimilation. Then you had this enormous murder of half the Yiddish speaking population of Europe. And then to add insult to injury, so to speak, the greatest thing that ever happened to the Jewish people happened in 1948, the creation of the state of Israel. We had a home. We never had a home since biblical times, but Israel had to decide how it wanted to present itself to the world. And Yiddish was associated with the Holocaust and the victimhood and the suffering. And so in America, in Israel and all over the world, the thousands of Yiddish schools that proliferated all over the world were closed within a period of 20 years. And Hebrew schools came up. And so Yiddish was decimated until the 1970s, at which point it started to make a comeback through Klass music, through Yiddish theater, now through television and academia. And Yiddish is having a renaissance all over the world, which is amazing.

Larry (15:36):

You mentioned you got into acting when you were a kid.

Avi Hoffman (15:40):

Yes.

Larry (15:40):

Did you have mentors? Did somebody influence your decision to do that?

Avi Hoffman (15:48):

You know, interestingly enough, not, not directly, but my mother, who was so happy to survive the war and have a child, which meant that Hitler had failed in his mission. She had so much fun with me as a child. We used to sing songs together. The songs were Yiddish songs. My first language was Yiddish. So I grew up singing Yiddish songs, but I also sang folk songs. I sang Peter Paul and Mary and The Weavers and all these great folk tunes. And then she started writing these little plays for me to perform at the Yiddish School. So by the time I was four years old, five years old, six years old, I was already performing. And I had, apparently I had a little bit of talent 'cause everybody applauded and liked what I was doing and encouraged me to go farther. But my professional life in theater started when I was 10, when the Yiddish Theater in New York in Manhattan heard that there was this young 10 year old boy in the Bronx who spoke fluent Yiddish and sang and wanted to be an actor.

Avi Hoffman (17:22):

And they called me up and they said, listen, could you come in and read for us for a play that we're doing in New York in Manhattan? And I ended up becoming, part of that play was called Bronx Express, 1968. It was based on an old play by OIP Dior. And it was a beautiful kind of, you know, melodramatic take on how America destroys, you know, the social fabric of society by, you know, offering money and riches and, you know, to these greenhorns who leave their wives and families to pursue wealth. And I played a young 10 year old boy whose father leaves him to go to Wall Street, and he ends up shining his shoes on Wall Street and recognizing him. And then it's all a dream. And it's, you know, he comes back to the family. And it's a happy ending. And that's how I started my professional career.

Larry (18:30):

And then you received a congressional award and invited to the Vatican to meet the Pope?

Avi Hoffman (18:39):

Yeah. you know what's interesting? I never pursued any of, well, I shouldn't say that. I did pursue meeting the Pope. I was, I have been involved for many years in many, many different Holocaust projects because I'm a child of survivors. I feel like the most important lesson, and again, especially today, the most important lesson that we can try to teach the world is that the Holocaust should never happen again. And so I have dedicated much of my work over, and I'm not a young man anymore. I'm 65 years old

Larry (19:23):

To me, which is

Avi Hoffman (19:24):

Young for many, right?

Larry (19:26):

To me, you're a young man, <laugh>,

Avi Hoffman (19:28):

Right? But you know, I am officially a senior citizen at this point, so I get discounts at Walgreens. And so <laugh> I've dedicated much of my 40 year career to doing work that is related to the Holocaust. And one of the projects I was involved in brought together a Jew, a young Jewish survivor of daal concentration camp, and a Catholic artist whose work was in an album that was given to this young Jewish survivor of Dakar. And once we learned that the artist was Catholic, I decided that we had to go meet the Pope. And I went on a journey, which was quite it took seven years <laugh>. It wasn't like I called the Pope. And he said, yeah, come on over. There were actually two popes. First it was Pope Benedict and Pope Benedict didn't really want to meet with us because apparently he was getting ready to resign his pope dom.

Avi Hoffman (20:53):

And so then it took another few years to get to Pope Francis. But it was a long and arduous process. But after seven years of going through the archbishops in Miami and Washington and Vatican, we eventually received an invitation from Pope Francis to come meet with him and show him this artifact. And it was an extraordinary honor. And because of all the work that I've done over the years, congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided to honor not only me, but several others with a congressional recognition for my work in Jewish culture and Holocaust education and awareness. And then I got, my mother and I were both inducted into the Bronx Jewish Hall of Fame. So we're famous Jews from the Bronx. Now <laugh>

Larry (21:54):

What's going on in Israel now has been compared to to a Holocaust. And

Avi Hoffman (22:05):

On which, on which side, because there are many who are comparing what's happening in Gaza now to the Holocaust, but from the other side, they're saying the Israelis are indiscriminately killing Palestinians by the thousands, and that's like a genocide.

Larry (22:26):

Now I understand your question,

Avi Hoffman (22:29):

Right? So the answer, well finish your question now that I understand your perspective of,

Larry (22:35):

Well, in understanding your question, my answer primarily, I guess is on the Jewish side. But there is a question of innocent lives being lost and the tragedy of that in Gaza as well as there is in, in almost every war.

Avi Hoffman (23:06):

Right?

Larry (23:08):

Where I was going with this was I'd like to get your thoughts on what's happening in Israel now and its relationship to the spike in anti-Semitism on college campuses having my last grandchild still in college.

Avi Hoffman (23:30):

So, so I'm happy to answer your question, but I would like to quant qualify it by saying that I am no expert on politics. I am no expert in community relations that are political or geopolitical. I am in the arts. So I can answer your question from my human perspective, just as me as a person, I am devastated by all of it. I am devastated that a terrorist organization called Hamas is allowed to exist with a charter that specifically says all Jews should be dead. That is as Nazi as you can get. So if you wanna compare it to a Holocaust, you could say that they share the same goal to kill all the Jews in any way, shape, or form, with no boundaries. And to literally go in and create a pogrom, which is exactly what happened. 1400 plus Israeli Jews were killed, murdered, raped, decapitated, babies, children, adults, senior citizens, women, men murdered in the way that we haven't seen since the Holocaust and before in the 1880s and the 1890s and the early 19 hundreds.

Avi Hoffman (25:23):

Yeah, you'd be sitting in a village in, in Ukraine or Lithuania, and the Cusak would come in on their horses and rape the women, kill the children, kill the men, decapitate, get drunk and then leave. And 500 Jews were left dead. A thousand Jews, 500, you know, whatever it was, thousands of Jews were killed in Europe in pogroms, which created the first major wave of immigration to the western western world in the 1880s. The first wave was 1880. So in that sense, you know, the, the difference is Hamas is not the Nazi regime. They're not in charge of anything but a tiny sliver of land where they abuse their own people and use them as shields, human shields, to basically try to protect themselves and everything they've accumulated. Now, having said that, I do not, I find it very hard, and I love Israel. I grew up in Israel. I would, I would do almost anything for Israel. And if I were a younger man, I probably would've gotten on a plane and gone to Israel and said, Hey, what can I do?

Avi Hoffman (26:52):

But there is a, but I think the Israelis would be wiser to find a way to do what they need to do in a way that does not kill as many innocent civilians in spite of the fact that Hamas has made it almost impossible not to. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the reason is, just to finish answering your question, is that all the anti-Semites in the world are own. And there are so many of them always throughout history. All they need is an excuse to rise up on campuses around the world to rise up in cities around the world to rise up and protest around. They just didn't excuse, I hate what Israel is doing in Gaza. I hate all the Jews. All Jews should die. It's such an easy step from, I don't agree with what the Israeli government is choosing to do, which is a legitimate comment.

Avi Hoffman (28:14):

I don't agree with everything the American government does. It doesn't make me an anti-American the opposite. I love America more than anything. I'm very upset by what's happening in America today from the government perspective. But from the Israeli perspective, the world antisemites don't need much of an excuse to rise up again and want to hurt Jews. And this is what's happening. I think today I saw the statistic, anti-Semitic incidents in America has risen 380% since the beginning of this year. Anti-Semitic incidents on campuses are rampant and all over the world now, there are protests against Israel, which immediately turn into protests against the Jews.

Avi Hoffman (29:17):

And as much as all am Israel, you know, rem every, all of Israel is one family. Israel is Israel, and the Jews are much bigger than just Israel. And there are many Jews, many who I know personally who don't agree with what the Israeli government is doing. There are many Jews who don't, you know, who, who don't even know anything about Israel, forget about caring, they don't know. Which kind of brings us back to where we started. We must educate the world about why Jews are not a threat. Jews are not a threat to anybody. Now, the Israelis currently might be a threat to Hamas and should be, you should kill somebody who says, my entire goal in life is to kill you. Okay? Bring it on and we'll kill you. But, but not every Palestinian is kamas. Just like not every Jew is an Israeli <laugh>. So we have to teach, you know, in in, in the Palestinian areas, they teach the children math by saying, if you kill two Israelis or two Jews, and then you kill another three Jews, how many Jews did you kill? That's as long as you teach young children that there will never be peace. We have to teach the world to accept, to accept Jews, to accept Muslims, to accept Christians, to accept Buddhists, to accept black people and yellow people and brown people, and and green people and blue people. We have to learn to accept one another. And only then can there be any kind of peace. And that includes politically, it includes geographically, it includes ethnically, it includes every element of humanity. That's my lecture for the day. Thank you very much.

Larry (31:54):

Let's go on to something

Avi Hoffman (31:59):

A little

Larry (31:59):

Happier less. You were one of the founders of Yiddish Kite Initiative to teach about Jewish culture. Let's talk more about Yiddish Kite initiative and what it is.

Avi Hoffman (32:13):

Well, you know, it's interesting. Yiddish Kite Initiative, as I said, was founded by my mother and myself about seven years ago as a way to promote Jewish culture to all the people who don't know anything about it or who know a little bit about it and need to know more, whether they're Jews or non-Jews. And the biggest problem we encountered, interestingly enough, is that nobody could spell Yiddish Kite. How do you spell Yiddish Kite? When I said my email is avi yiddish kite initiative.org, everybody went, wait a minute, how do you spell that? And then it took an hour to explain it. So we decided to change our branding to YI Yiddish Kite Initiative. Why I love Jewish. So we now brand ourselves as why I love jewish.org. That's our website. For all of you out there, go to our website. Why I love Jewish org.

Avi Hoffman (33:21):

And, and so we are now, you know, it's amazing. We went from a a little organization to now being a global provider of content programming to literally over a million people around the world, maybe more, have seen our programs. We publish books. We, during COID, we were forced to do what you and I are doing now, which is go virtual. Well, in going virtual, we ended up creating over 250 programs that are on our YouTube channel. And these range from lectures to panel discussions, to concerts, to play readings, to performances, to holiday programming. And it's really, it's been an extraordinary growth of reaching out to the world and saying, look, you don't have to hate the Jews. You can love the Jews because look what we've given the world, all of this amazing music and theater and poetry and literature and, and food bagels. Who knew that the bagel was gonna become a, an American staple bagel in a smear the Yiddish language. Do you know how many words, how many Yiddish words are actually in the Webster's dictionary? You wanna take a guess? A wild guess?

Larry (35:08):

A wild guess. 120

Avi Hoffman (35:13):

Over 5,000.

Larry (35:15):

Really?

Avi Hoffman (35:17):

Yes. And you didn't know that. I want the whole world to know that there are over 5,000 Yiddish words more than any other language in the English dictionary, in the Webster's dictionary spiel, Schmale schuck. I mean, that's just a couple of shs chutzpah, MHI Ner. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. And today it's not unusual to turn on the news and hear go, you know, non-Jewish anchors like Rachel Maddow say, wow, that's a mishigas. So Yiddish has become a part of our English language, and people don't realize how much of what we think of as mainstream culture in the world actually comes from our modest Jewish heritage. Yeah, it's quite amazing. Quite amazing. Do you know, in very quickly in the legal profession, lawyers, you know, make their arguments and everything is transcribed and available through a service called Lexi Nexus. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Yes. You can do a search for any word, and it will show you how many times it that word has been used in any legal proceeding. Can you guess where the word chutzpah is used the most often in the United States of America? Which state is the word chutzpah used more often than any other word in the legal profession?

Larry (37:37):

So another chance to embarrass myself or my lack of lawyer? No,

Avi Hoffman (37:41):

No, I'm, I'm just trying to make the point that nobody knows. Very few people know these things. Please, any state,

Larry (37:50):

Alabama

Avi Hoffman (37:52):

Close Georgia.

Larry (37:55):

Really?

Avi Hoffman (37:57):

Yes. In Georgia, the word chutzpah is used more than any other word according to LexiNexis. When I did the search many years ago, I,

Larry (38:13):

What can I say? This is, this is an education, this is what it should be.

Avi Hoffman (38:19):

Right? And that's what the Yiddish Kite Initiative, A-K-A-Y-I love Jewish is dedicated to education. We, we have three basic pillars, foundational supports, one we call learn. You have to learn, you have to teach, you have to give information to people so they enrich themselves in any way possible. So everything we do has some kind of an educational component to it. Our second foundation is to create, we create, we create programming, we create concerts, we create plays, we create books. We create guide, study guides. We create work that can be seen by the public and hopefully will one day win awards on, you know, we'll win Emmy Awards and Tony Awards and Academy Awards. We want to be recognized for the work we do in creating entertainment. And then the final one is what we call engagement to engage. We create, we learn and we engage. And when we engage, we don't just engage the Jewish community, we engage the non-Jewish community because frankly, it's the non-Jewish community that needs to learn why they shouldn't hate us. Because the Jews, there are some self hating Jews, but you know what, they're few and far between and none of them are going out to kill Jews.

Avi Hoffman (40:06):

It's the non-Jews that we have to eventually reach in order to end the hatred. This visceral, violent hatred of the Jewish people, which today, unfortunately has become so prominent.

Larry (40:28):

You mentioned before, and I want to clarify for the audience, you mentioned you have a YouTube channel for Yiddish Kite.

Avi Hoffman (40:36):

Yeah. Yeah.

Larry (40:36):

What, how do, how do people access it?

Avi Hoffman (40:39):

Well, if you go to our website, why I love jewish.org, there are many different places to click that have the YouTube logo or YI live, or, but if you go to YouTube and everybody goes to YouTube, just look up Yiddish Kite or Why I love Jewish or Avi Hoffman, whatever you look up will get you to us. And then you can subscribe to our channel so that every time we have a new program, you'll know about it. And we have new programs all the time, and we already have over 250 free programs that you can watch and enjoy. Some of them are, like I said, simple interviews like you and I are doing right now. And you know what, if you send me the link to this interview, we'll put it on our YouTube channel and share it with everybody and say, look at this. Wonderful, you know, specifically for seniors interview that Avi Hoffman did I, I do a podcast as well. I call it Schmoozing with Avi. And so you and I are basically having our own little now,

Larry (41:49):

And it's a joy.

Avi Hoffman (41:51):

Well, thank you. Likewise. I've interviewed many, many, many people on many, many different subjects, and I find it fascinating to find out what other people are doing like you. And I very much appreciate the work that you do specifically for seniors.

Larry (42:11):

<Laugh>. Thanks for the plug. Do you give Yiddish online courses?

Avi Hoffman (42:19):

The answer is yes. I, we used to do them live, but that became a little harder to do. And I am very busy right now, so it's very hard for me to schedule live Yiddish classes. But if you go to our website, we are, we've created another offshoot of what we do called Yiddish Fun, and Yiddish Fun is on our website and it says, learn yid Yiddish fun classes. And I have taken the Yiddish classes that we did virtually, and we've packaged them in a way that people can access them online virtually 24 7 at their own convenience. It's a six hour course called Yiddish Fun oh one, and basically, you know, for $18 I think, or $36, whatever it is, it's very inexpensive. You can access those six hours of Yiddish with me and my mom anytime you want 24 hours a day. It comes with study guides and audio tracks and Zoom videos to teach, kind of have fun with Yiddish. So yes, the answer is yes. The Yiddish Fun website is still very new. So we're still trying to work out the kinks, but, but generally speaking, the answer is yes. You can go to our website, look for the Yiddish fund classes, click on it and pay the $18 or whatever it is. And we will give you access to our Yiddish fund class.

Larry (44:01):

I mentioned that because I tried to access that and there was a, a link that wasn't working.

Avi Hoffman (44:07):

Yeah. I dunno what the problem, what problem you had, but if you go to yiddish fund.org it should, I don't know. I'm, I'm not sure what the problem was. We're going look into it.

Larry (44:21):

So if people have trouble right after listening to this, give it a little while and try again.

Avi Hoffman (44:28):

Well, or go to our website and send me a contact message and just say, Hey, I tried to get your Yiddish fund and it didn't work out, please get back to me. And then either I or one of my staff will get back to them and, and work it out and take their, you know, donation and give them access. Yeah.

Larry (44:49):

Because after our discussion

Avi Hoffman (44:51):

Yeah,

Larry (44:52):

I was gonna say, I don't want anybody to miss the possibility of learning or relearning Yiddish.

Avi Hoffman (44:59):

Right. I, I will definitely look into it and see if we can fix the problem. But I just want all your listeners to know and, and be clear that Yiddish Kite Initiative is a nonprofit organization. We are IRS 5 0 1 C three public charity, which means all donations. We are all about donations. That's how we survive. We get a lot of grants from governments and cities and counties and institutions, but we also rely on the donations of individuals and sponsors and corporate entities. And it's all tax deductible, you know, to the degree extent allowed by law. So I encourage all your listeners to go to the website and donate and help support our work. And everything we do is, is basically donation based.

Larry (45:59):

And the website again is

Avi Hoffman (46:04):

YI, the letter y, the letter I love LOVE, Jewish. J-E-W-I-S h.org. Dot org YI love jewish.org. And you know why we called it why I love Jewish instead of why I love Jews

Larry (46:29):

From what we've talked about. I understand

Avi Hoffman (46:35):

There are some Jews I don't love <laugh>. There are plenty of Jews that I don't love. Not all Jews are great. Some Jews are terrible people, but Jewish, the culture, the people, the foundational, we are the oldest surviving culture in the world today, basically. And so we have a lot to offer and we should be loved. And if you go to our website, you'll find out why I love Jewish.

Larry (47:09):

What did we miss? Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Avi Hoffman (47:18):

You know, I'd like to finish with this. It's not your fault. What do I mean by that? It's not your, all of you people out there who are looking at me right now and listening to my voice, it's not your fault that you don't know about Yiddish. It's not your fault that you don't know about the things I've been talking about. It, it's just the way of the world. But you have an opportunity and your children have an opportunity and your grandchildren have an opportunity and all their friends have an opportunity to learn something and be entertained by the wonderful treasures of the Jewish people that we are offering to you through our organization. So don't feel bad that you don't know Jewish or your grandparents spoke Yiddish when they didn't want you to understand it's just the way it was. But now, in the year 2023, you can enrich yourselves, your family, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors with the glory and the beauty and the depth of the Jewish people culture in, in a very non-threatening way. And maybe we can help to fight anti-Semitism through the arts. And that's the mission of why I love Jewish.

Larry (48:52):

Avi, this has been a joy, an honor, a pleasure. I am delighted that you agreed to come on specifically for seniors. Thank you. My

Avi Hoffman (49:07):

Pleasure. My pleasure, everybody. Please be safe. We are living in a world that I didn't think or imagine that I would ever see in my lifetime where being Jewish is suddenly dangerous again, and we have to stand up and say never again. Is now

Larry (49:36):

Avi. Thank you. If you found this podcast interesting, fun, or helpful, tell your friends and family and click on the follow or subscribe button. We'll let you know when new episodes are available. You've been listening to specifically for seniors. We'll talk more next time. Stay connected.