Leonard Nimoy     

    Talks to Zev Borow  -  1995 

By Zev Borow


The world is an increasingly small and freaky place, of this there is little doubt. Still, there are moments, situations, experiences and the like, that capture, magnify and reinforce this feeling with a completeness that can be overwhelming in its power and precision. Case in point: It’s afternoon. The phone rings. You pick up. On the other end of the line, greeting you by your first name and explaining your connection via car phone, is the booming, and slightly gravelly, baritone of the Vulcan chief science officer of the Starship Enterprise (to say nothing of the omniscient voice of "In Search Of"). He says he knows your mother. Almost at once, you begin to discuss Yiddish. These things happen. The world is an increasingly small and freaky place.
The voice of the world’s most famous Vulcan (as well as various 60’s and ‘70s television classics, productions of Shakespeare, Broadway, and feature films for television and the theater) belongs to Leonard Nimoy. And while the role he created nearly 30 years ago as Mr. Spock on Star Trek has propelled him to nothing short of icon status, the 55-year-old actor and director (Nimoy’s directing credits include two of the Star Trek films, as well as "Three Men and a Baby," "The Good Mother," and "Funny About Love") now seems to have turned his attentions to a decidedly more personal galaxy - one populated by the fools and storytellers and rabbis, and foolish storytellers who are rabbis, of the shtetls of Mendele, Manger, and I.B. Singer.
Leonard Nimoy: More than anything else, Yiddish, for me, is a call to home.
He calls from a road somewhere within the Diaspora northwest of Los Angeles.
LN: It’s a reminder of who I am, and where I am from, who my family is, where I started, all those things. Yiddish was the language and culture of my growing up in Boston, and it has never left me.
 
In recent years Nimoy has been involved in several high-profile projects that revolve around Yiddish. The most notable of which was last year’s series of Yiddish stories read on National Public Radio. He was one of the producers of the 13-part series that saw Hollywood actors and actresses (including Nimoy) read the work of Yiddish authors and Yiddish folk tales. The programs drew critical acclaim and highlighted a surge in interest in Yiddish literature … like many who grew up with the language and hold it dear, Nimoy finds refreshing. (Yiddish theater is an interest Nimoy shares with my mother, a Yiddish playwright, and the only reason she found her way into my surreal conversation with Spock.)
LN: I have always been interested in working with Yiddish. The language and the literature are amazingly rich and textured. It’s completely unique and special. In recent years the right Yiddish projects have come along for me to be involved with, but it’s something that has always been there. When I first moved out to Los Angeles in the 1950’s I knew and worked with a group of Yiddish actors.
 
Nimoy can recall several past roles, and how they were influenced by his Yiddish background. His portrayal of the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s husband in A Woman Called Golda,  the fiddler of a theatrical production of Fiddler on the Roof, even the eminent Vulcan, Mr. Spock, himself. In his recently published autobiography I Am Spock, (Hyperion, 1995) Nimoy explains that Spock’s now famous four-fingered split-hand salute was spawned from his memories of the mystical Cohen rabbi hand gestures he saw while attending religious services as a child. The book, which is actually the sequel to the autobiography I Am Not Spock, published in 1975, chronicles these and other religious and Yiddish influences on his work.
And Nimoy says that in many ways it is easier for him to identify with Yiddish culture than any of his religious upbringing: I think many people are drawn to Yiddish for that reason, because it is synonymous with home and family. But even so, I think it’s a language, a culture and a literature with a lot to offer even those that know nothing about it. It has great history, nuance and emotive power.
 
He says that while he’s not sure when his love for Yiddish will again intersect with his love for the arts, he is confident that it will. Soon.
LN: I’m continually looking for different projects, and will be only too happy to work with Yiddish as the language or setting again. It’s like anything else though, you just have to wait for something that you feel strongly about. But I do have ideas.