| |
 ZZ: You grew up in Philadelphia during the Depression as the child of an academic family. What was being a kid in that family like?
NC: It was a first-generation family, so the lives of the children were split between the first-generation immigrant community and the outside world, so it was a pretty sharp split -- so sharp that I never even told my parents about it, nor did my brother. We happened to be the only Jewish family in a very anti-Semitic neighborhood of German and Irish Catholics, and being out on the streets was a chancy activity. It was openly pro-Nazi in those days. Those were the kinds of problems you have when you're growing up in that environment. We would go out and play with the kids in the street or play ball or something, but all of that was a different world.
The world we were in, and very much immersed in, was a Jewish community, first generation. Hebrew was the main issue -- pre-State of Israel, but some form of pre-State Zionism, Jewish culture, Hebrew school, Hebrew teaching and ceremonies. The associations and friends were all very tightly knit, basically a first-generation immigrant community.
And there were other worlds. So, for example, my mother's family and my father's family were two completely different worlds. My father's family was deeply Orthodox. In fact, according to him, they reverted to even more immersion in Orthodox Jewish practice once they got here, as compared with the shtetl in the Ukraine, where they were from. But it was very much a transplanted East European shtetl. So, my grandfather -- who lived here for 50 years -- never learned a word of English and lived in a four-block area between the synagogue and the butcher store, and his daughter's house where he lived, and his friends and so on.
ZZ: Your mother's family was involved in leftist politics. Did that have any affect on your later decision to become a political activist?
NC: I'm sure it did. But one of the big influences in my childhood was an uncle who was a very interesting person. This was during the Depression. He was one of the few members of the family who had a job. The reason was that he was a cripple, and under New York laws, that gave him the opportunity to have a newsstand. So he had a small newsstand, which was one of the few sources of income for the network of aunts and uncles and cousins and so on. He happened to be very active. He had never gone beyond, I think, fourth grade, but he was one of the most educated people I've ever met in my life. He read everything and was interested in everything. He ended up being a wealthy lay-psychoanalyst with an apartment on Riverside Drive. But the newsstand, and in fact, in his whole circle, there was a very vibrant, lively debating society and an exciting environment.
He had been through every imaginable left-wing sect and knew a lot about them, and I'm sure this had an influence, as did the rest of the family, or just the environment. You could not grow up in the 1930s and have your eyes open and not see quite a lot of suffering. I have vivid memories of desperate people coming to the door selling rags, going with my mother in a trolley car and seeing security forces attacking strikers pretty brutally, women mostly -- it happened to be a textile plant. Things like that were fairly common.
And then of course, everything was happening in Europe, which was very ominous. It was almost as if it was with us because there was tremendous concern about it. And in fact, it was even alive right in my neighborhood, which happened, unlike many, to be quite pro-Nazi.
Next page | Foundations of a political philosophy
|
|
|
|
|
Listen as Chomsky talks about his family and his early years in Philedelphia.
|
|
Noam Chomsky
;)
