Listen to Our Words
Oral Histories of the Jewish Community of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

This publication is available for purchase from the SVC Bookstore

General Editors: Richard David Wissolik; Jennifer Campion; Barbara Wissolik. Editors: Erica Wissolik, Milton Radman, David Wilmes, Joseph Laskos. Introductions: Mark Gruber, OSB; Benedict Janecko, OSB; Ronald E. Tranquilla; Richard David Wissolik. Funded through grants from the Pennsyvania Historical and Museum Commission, the United Jewish Federation, and the Westmoreland County Jewish Community Council. 1997. ISBN: 1-885851-10-3. $30.00

Comments on the Book

"I had expected this book to be fascinating, interesting, of use—it is all of those things.  I was not prepared to be moved by it, but I was moved, moved not only by the power of reconciliation and memory, but also by the struggles and suffering, the courage, resilience and dignity, the nobility and love embodied in its pages.  Here is a book to savor, to learn from, and enjoy." Ronald E. Tranquilla, Ph.D., English, Saint Vincent College

"The spoken words that follow fall into the same categories as the biblical stories; all witness the fact that "salvation is thy house."  In this age, when the breakdown of the family catches our attention, the histories in this book give the Jewish people and all of us hope about the future and our own identity and survival, and the role of family and family history." Benedict Janecko, O. S. B., Saint Vincent Archabbey

"Listen to Our Words is a moving, even arresting, sequence of memories.  Something essentially Jewish is laid bare, something timeless and profound, all wrapped in the unlikely mantle of the Laurel Highlands of America's Mid-Atlantic.  Yiddish axioms and Kosher foods appear in the coal valleys and steel towns already fabulous for its mixture of Eastern European peasantry and Waspish gentry.  A Jewish mother sighs in these pages, wishing that more Christians believed in their own Christmas tidings: 'Good will toward men.'  Her sigh and earnest, if bitter, wish throws into sharp relief angles of the Gentile community which would otherwise never be apparent.  Beyond the descriptions of a particular people, or their larger social backdrop, the book is a revelation of human nature itself.  All the aspirations, desperation and desire that memory can hold and words can tell, are recorded here." Mark Gruber, OSB, Ph.D., Sociology/Anthropology, Saint Vincent College