Paul S. Green, in his Memoir, “Growing up in Interwar Bensonhurst,” describes how Yiddish, a common language among Jews of European descent, continued to be learned and spoken. In fact, there were Yiddish schools in Bensonhurst as well as four common Yiddish Newspapers being serviced in New York. These newspapers included the Jewish Morning Journal, which was read by a mostly religious Orthodox crowd, and the Jewish Daily Forward, which was read mainly by new Immigrants, the Jewish Day, which was considered a left wing liberal paper with independent views, and Freiheit, a paper that supported communism and the Soviet Union.
There was also Yiddish entertainment available. In downtown Manhattan there were several Yiddish theaters that performed translations of Shakespeare, Strindberg, and Dostoyevsky. These theaters were very successful and attracted large audiences. Another entertainment company, the Yiddish Cultural Institute, otherwise known as YIVO, issued books, magazines, and pamphlets on just about every topic. Many Jewish families in Bensonhurst would travel to Manhattan in order to watch the Yiddish theater and eat dinner out, including Green’s family.
