Tag #157269 - Interview #78179 (Michal Friedman)

In my own life, there was a period when Hebrew gained the upper hand over Yiddish. It was an ideology, Zionism. I have never mastered Hebrew completely, however. I absorbed Yiddish in a natural way. For me, Yiddish is more emotional. You curse in it, you bless in it, and your first feelings are expressed in it. Myself, I count in Yiddish, not in Polish, to this very day. I have developed a close relationship with Polish. There was a time when I knew 'Bieniowski', Kochanowski, Asnyk [famous pieces of Polish literature] by heart. And today? I speak occasionally in Yiddish with those who come to visit this country. Here in Warsaw there is in fact nobody I could speak Yiddish with. Only with Kac [Daniel Kac, one of the last living Yiddishists, a writer], who calls me very often to ask the question: 'What is it in Polish?' and with whom I then speak not in Polish but in Yiddish.