Omer 11: Memory in a Moving World

Yesterday evening, I ran supertitles for a Yiddish Play written in 1944 about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (just a year and a half after the event), דער נס אין געטאָ (Der Nes in Geto, The Miracle in the Ghetto). The play was written before accounts including full details of the uprising reached the U.S., yet much of the imagined account resonates with actual events. This act of memory, or making of memory, carries through generations of different peoples, and those mixed descendants. Genealogy, oral histories, and archives weave together with other artistic expressions of a collective past.

Often, I pause to share stories of my ancestors with family, friends, acquaintances, classrooms. These tales include known facts and stories which weave together the broader details. Parts of the narrative came to me directly through my great-grandma, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives. Other details, through my own research, guessing, training, and imagination, I have pieced together to create stories, those things that stick in our minds and bring us examples of hope, grit, woes, connection.

As the world seems to move faster and faster, shaking and lurching beneath my feet, I hope to continue to take a break, breathe in, remind myself of memory personal and collective, and share these stories with others.