Audiences are audiences.

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.

I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.