So maybe to start, can you tell us a bit about the Jewish world, the Jewish life of your youth,

and how that took shape in your own life as you came of age?

Well, my parents were typical immigrants from Eastern Europe,

which is to say they were lapsed Orthodox.

If they were anything, they were orthodox,

but they were not observance kept getting attenuated as time went on.

I had grandparents who were chereidim avant la letter.

That is the word did not even exist.

And my maternal grandfather always thought that 613 commandments were not enough.

He used to make new ones up, which he devoutly believed were in the Talmud, you know,

in the Shulhan Arroch.

So, I mean, I was soaked. Yiddish was my first language.

I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up as a little kid bilingually, and I think I knew Yiddish

better than English for the first few years of my life. The story has told to me that I was playing on the street when I was about two, three years old.

Speaking Yiddish, and some adults observed,

who was that Greenhorn, who was that Greenhorn kid.

So I was taken for an immigrant myself.

I then, I was sent, again, as it was very characteristic,

the Jewish kids in that area either was sent to Heider or to a Yeshiva or to nothing.

And my father successfully resisted the pressures of his father-in-law to send me to a Yeshiva,

for which I have been eternally grateful.

But I did go faithfully to a Heater, which was, I don't even remember.

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