Please note that the word "justice" never appears in this broadside.
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I had the good fortune (Koun) to travel to Japan on business. I was familiar with Lederer/ Burdick’s The Ugly American and so I was on my best behavior. I was remember being impressed with the sale of beer through vending machines on their city streets.

Back then I was a smoker and after almost finishing one I prepared to throw my butt into the street and I stopped myself. The streets were clean and I mean perfectly clean, spotlessly clean. If I had tossed my butt into the street it would have been the only litter within sight.

People often talk about life altering experiences and I had mine in downtown Tokyo – so much so that I still till this day I still will not litter and I often pick up the litter of others.

Tradition!

As a child I heard Yiddish spoken by my European-born grandparents and my first-generation American parents,  yet I never had the curiosity to learn to speak it myself.

But my parents subscribed to New York’s Yiddish theatre company,  the Folksbiene,  and I’d go with them and follow the plays by reading the English supertitles.

When I met my husband I learned,   surprisingly for our generation,  that he spoke Yiddish and loved the language.  And so we continued to go to the Folksbiene and other venues,  where we saw wonderful Yiddish productions of plays including Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot,  with me still reading the supertitles.

Then in 2018 the Folksbiene presented a highly acclaimed Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof directed by Joel Gray.  It was mounted first at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage,  and later transferred off-Broadway to Stage 42,  and we saw both amazing productions.

Based on the Tevya stories by Sholem Aleichem,   which were originally written in Yiddish,   the play’s dialogue and lyrics were displayed creatively on the back of the stage in both Russian – to reflect its setting in czarist Russia’s Pale of Settlement  –  and in English.

But I knew the emotional story and its songs so well,  I had no need for the English translation –  all I needed was a hanky to wipe away my tears.

– Dana Susan Lehrman