Quotes

[on teaching a course on Jewish humor at Hunter College] We were not just telling jokes. We were investigating why so many comedians are Jewish and so many Jewish jokes are so self-accusing. It goes back to immigration from the shtetl, from that poverty, and because the Jew was the object of so much opprobrium and hatred. The jokes were a defense mechanism: 'We're going to talk about ourselves in a more damaging way than you could.'

I remember his [referring to grandfather Sholom Aleichem] laugh; I remember his hand when we walked. He used to say the tighter I hold on to his hand, the better he will write. He wrote me a letter which I treasure: 'I'm writing you this letter to ask you to hurry and grow up and learn to write so you can write me a letter. In order to grow up, it is necessary to drink milk and eat soup and vegetables and fewer candies'.

[on her childhood during the Russian Revolution] Dead bodies were frozen in peculiar positions on the street. People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour. But a child has no basis for comparison. Doesn't every child step over dead bodies? I didn't know any different.