Generation Gap

As you may or may not be able to tell, this blog is ultimately about the idea of survival. Not like, the guys who stockpile gold and ammunition while living off of Twinkies and deer urine. No, this is a more philosophical idea of survival, focusing on the survival of humanity as a whole, rather than on the survival of individuals. At the same time, however, the survival of the whole relies on the survival of the individual, and that’s what I’m going to talk about here.

I, like many red-blooded Americans, have put a lot of thought into what I would do if there were some sort of zombie-based apocalypse (more on that in my next post). Would I be able to grow my own food? What would I do for water? How about electricity? Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the answers are no, nothing, and no way. The fact is, every generation builds using the tools of the previous one, and as a result we get further and further removed from understanding how things actually work. Take, for example, the car. Back in the day, it was a collection of gears and pistons that you could fix with your bare hands; now it’s hydraulics and electronics that require advanced equipment to repair. Frankly, if anything ever breaks, my only solution is to Google it, and without Google, I’d be SOL.

Contrast that, for example, with my grandparents’ generation. My grandfather moved here from Russia when he was 9. After finishing middle school, he began working full time to support his family. And, by the end of his life, he was a millionaire (or at least pretty damn rich, I don’t know his exact net worth). If I were dropped in some foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, I’m pretty sure my response would involve a lot less thriving and a lot more fetal position. In addition, both of my grandparents fought in World War II; meanwhile, I spent a weekend getting really good at Call of Duty. In addition, my mom’s uncle fought in the Spanish Civil War, which contrasts nicely with the fact that I’m reading a book about it. The point is, these people kept their cool while staring down hails of gunfire, while I start freaking out if I go a day without my cell phone.

However, it’s not all bad news. The fact is, none of these people were born that way. I mean, my grandfather wasn’t some mini survivalist when he emigrated to Ellis Island. However, he was thrust into a bad situation, and he dealt with it, and grew stronger because of it. Similarly, I’m pretty sure none of these people had been shot at before entering the military, but, you know, you get used to it. And that’s where we as humans really shine: we can adapt to pretty much anything. But at the same time, it can’t hurt to be prepared.

Stand Apart

by Yenny Martin

Leonard and Susi were extremely young when they married—Susi 20 and Leonard 23. I believed that provided a sort of justification for his affairs: in order to ground themselves in a relationship a young person may feel the necessity to branch out, making up for missed experiences. However, my father feels this excuse of age justifies him too much. He feels there are some who naturally crave comfort in women—that there is no reason for it. I wasn’t satisfied with this answer—this aspect of Leonard’s personality seemed too random amidst what I know of our family. Leonard—to me the “head” of our family, who embodied it in so many ways—was simply a person, but now too shrouded in mystery to understand. The mystery is made in my mind; I’m unable to penetrate snippets of information fed to me. In my mind he is stuck in the middle… the single person standing apart from our easy-natured family and a voice I have no access to. I really appreciate the letter of his, to Susi, the letter I for some reason had not connected to this tumultuous period in their marriage when she had bolted the country, furious with him and his affairs. I am thoroughly confused with the stories of his affairs—their randomness obscures the side of him that does come across in our family: the compassionate generosity and jovial strength.

Adding to my confusion was my father’s reaction to it—which seems to have consisted of nothing. He was not surprised and felt it wasn’t his business. I have a very close relationship to my parents so if placed in that situation I would have felt that it was very much my business. I suppose the size of my father’s family distanced the four brothers from their parents and increased their independence, if they liked it or not.

My dad believes Leonard was creative in a large-scale way, with no limits. He says, “creative people are a certain way, they’re sort of wild, they’re not good at details.” Leonard constructed The Cannery with an artistic temperament, tearing things down if he didn’t like it. “No business person in his right mind would do a thing like that,” says my dad, referring to the initial construction of The Cannery, which posed major

financial problems upon being set in motion. And although Susi painted and wrote and engaged in artistic activities, my dad says she painted in a careful sort of way, needing a lot of feedback. When Susi read a book she read for the details, where “Leonard would dismiss it as blah blah blah and he might be right”. However, my dad felt Susi was extremely creative with people: in her encouragement and nurturing, which may perhaps be more profound.

Leonard was all over the place, messy, as a creative person. His affairs may have reflected that in a negative way. My dad used to say that often sensitive and creative people are a bit self-destructive. This may have been a weakness of Leonard’s: his insecurity or necessity for comfort induced a harmful practice.

Intimacy or Strain

by Yenny Martin

Leonard, his mother Aga, Susi and Andy and Steve (my dad and uncle).

Although my father had told me of my grandpa’s affairs, it never set in. As my dad talked of Leonard’s womanizing ways, I wondered about the extent; and I believed it safe to trust my grandfather in general-loyalty to his wife. But recently my dad very casually brought up the somewhat familiar story of my grandmother Susi’s reaction to Leonard’s affair—she had climbed onto the roof of his mistress’s car and in front of her peed on it. That had obviously dominated the larger story, since now I was quite startled and disappointed to hear of his infidelities. The woman with the car had been his secretary. And now as I write this and ask my father to recount the story, I am informed his affairs were not limited to her. I’m not sure what to make of this information.

When Susi and Leonard were alive together and I was alive, I don’t remember intimacy or strain. I suppose at that point they had lived for so long together that their problems were, to a degree, washed out in the background.

Taking Leonard’s rascally ways into consideration, I have never come to the realization that he is related to me. During

the opening of The Cannery, Leonard enjoyed press and celebrity, a diplomatic hambone and entertainer. He was a character and very rarely timid, even in his own creation of shocking situations: yelling at waiters, pushing aside (in a tipsy state) old folk waiting for a cab, opening champagne so that the cork nearly skimmed an ear in its flight across the room. That part of him must have come across in my father, and me, in some way. In my father I see traces of Leonard—at times a mischief-maker with a fiery temper. But his general personality follows that of Susi’s—floating and modest. But it seems my grandfather also gave him his idealism and hyper-sensitivity. Leonard’s uncle, Peter, was extremely shy and self-conscious—Russian traits, so my dad says. My father says I have “barbarian” on both sides of my family: from Leonard and from my mother’s Mongol father.

Getting to Know the Family: Part 1

As I have begun to look into part of my family’s past in relation to the streets of San Francisco, I noticed more than just a passing few connections. It’s beginning to look like my family’s more recent history has been closely intertwined with the foggy city. Not only have the two characters I’ve focused on so far, Polly and Poppy, been some stories I am learning about my family’s lives in SF, but now that I am deeper into the creation of this story, I keep thinking of more ties my family has to this city. My parents met in San Francisco, my mother’s family on her dad’s side all grew up there, a few of my relations currently live there, and I’m connected to all of this through the love I have for them and San Francisco as well. There is one place for everyone where they feel most happy and comfortable and for me that is San Francisco’s lovely streets. Maybe this is because of my close family connections? Who knows? But I sure want to find out!

My 'home away from home'

Is it worth it?

By: Klaira

One of the biggest and most important lessons that I have learned growing up is that our lives do not depend our own decisions but rather on the ones that others make for us. Think about it, we don’t have the opportunity to choose our parents, (as unhappy as we can be with them at times) what schools to attend, what to think and believe.

I, for one, wouldn’t be here today but for one of the most important decisions that my great grandmother made while she was in her late teens.

Chaya in her early 20s

During the early 1900s -before the Internet was created, before television and telephones became commodities, before the Wright brothers flew around the globe –-Jews were experiencing pogroms and were deprived of their basic human rights. Rumors were that America was the ultimate dream country, an escape, where one could prosper and have the opportunity for a brighter future. What more could you ask for?

For nineteen  year old Chaya life was no different, growing up in a small town of Novograd Volinskiy, just three hours away from Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. Rather what is today known as Ukraine, Ukraine’s capital and Novograd Volinskiy.

The journey to the Land of Opportunity would be difficult and took several months by train and ship.Older children were often the first to immigrate to the new land send for their parents and other siblings after they got settled. Chaya and her brothers were no exception. Since their parents died, before Chaya was able to turn nineteen, her two brothers remained her only relatives but they lived thousands of miles away.

The next time they would see each other would be on the new soil of the glorious United States. But who knew how long that would take… if at all….. They finally were able to gather enough money to send for Chaya: the three of them would all be together once again.

On the day of her departure, Chaya was saying farewell to her friends and neighbors, and a beloved suitor, Yosef. When it comes Yosef’s turn to say goodbye, he tells Chaya that if she leaves, he will throw himself under the rails of the very train that she will be on.

One of the biggest and hardest decisions that Chaya had to make was to jump from that train as it started moving, leaving all of her belongings. That was also the time that Chaya realized that she would probably never see her brothers again.

Over the years, the three communicated through letters but that became very difficult as the First and Second World Wars came and went, when the Soviet government censored any contact with the outside world.

Zvyagel (currently known as Novograd Volinskiy)

In order to stay alive, Chaya had to stop communicating with the land of opportunity, knowing that her chance would never come again.

In case you are wondering, Yosef did become Chaya’s loving husband, and later my great grandfather.

Bonding with the brothers.

The similarities with my dad are endless but what about Andy?

I feel all these similarities with him through stories, other people, photographs yet why?

How does this make any sense?

Where is this unusual quick subliminal connection coming from anyway?

In some ways like his love for travel, a stimulating conversation, a nice long run, and our love for Israel, are random passions we share as well as my dad and my brother. In other things we share like appearance and family, it seems very eerily genetic. Watching my dad’s relationship with him through stories and photographs, my dad as the protective and intellectual older brother is not surprising to me at all-seeing how my brother is the complete definition of the smart, protective, mature older brother. The funny coincidence is, Andy was known to be quite the extroverted, eccentric, hand full that I am known to be in my crazy little family.

My brother has been an intelligent influence on my life, encouraging me to focus on my studies and use proper grammar 24/7 always correcting my “I talk goods” to “I talk wells.”

ISRAEL 09

In a way I feel like I have influenced him in many ways. Israel for example, was never an interest to him, his entire religion never interested him actually. My passion in Judaism totally surprised him since I used to join him on our usual “prison school” rant about hebrew school all the time. It turns out my love and for our people and our country is contagious because before you know it Adin is telling me the only way he will go on this month-long Israel adventure is if I am going. So, Adin and I trekked out on our voyage during the summer of 2009 and created life long-lasting memories and bonds with people never to be forgotten.

This brotherly bond reminds me of my dad and Andy. Since my dad and Adin are similar in the older brother role, and Andy and I share our similarities as the younger rascals I am not surprised that they both connected and bonded in Israel as well. Knowing these things, and experiencing these connections with my family, Adin, other kids around the world has opened my eyes to many things, one of the most important being to never to take my brother for granted. Learning about Andy and my dad already has and will keep teaching me so many englightening wonderful things.

What lies beneath the surface

Soooo here’s a little, shortened down glimpse into my me and my dad’s wacky relationship…

We kind of have a lot in common, including giant late afternoon sunny summer eggs and bagel breakfasts after a nice run on the mountain.

We wrestle, play in the garden, order the same “pablo burrito” at Hi-tec every week, and debate the amazingly complicated psychologies of the human mind together.

Besides our shared interests we have our shared dumb jokes, cackle laughs, and bubbly personalities. I can’t help but wonder what part Andy plays in all this. Most people wouldn’t think twice about the bond with their parents and think about their aunts and uncles play in the relationship. I think this is because since most people no their aunts and uncles, they find know reason to wonder about the influences they have on each other; it’s almost obvious.

I never thought I would be discovering me and my dads relationship and finding out how that relates us to his brother Andy but the more I think about it, and the more I discover about him, the more his impact on us is obvious to me and the more I want to find out…

How Yiddish Are YOU?

by Corey

Click on the photo below and log onto facebook to find out!

Schedule

At my last meeting with Jeremiah Moore, we sceduled out a workplan, deciding when to begin production and post-production of my project.  As of such (And because the quality is rather bad) I have decided to not edit the interview of my grandpa that I’ve been sitting on.  We’ve decided that production will begin mid-december, so until then I’m at a loss as to what to post.  If anyone has any ideas please feel free to comment on this video or contact me otherwise.

Senator Ettelson and the Crime of the Century

By Lee Goldin

 

Chicago has always been a tough town, and those near the seats of power often hear things they’d rather not. My distant cousin, Illinois State Senator Sam Ettelson, was no exception. According to Marjorie Warvelle Bear’s A Mile Square of Chicago, he was born in Chicago on November 19th 1874 to Benjamin and Flora Ettelson. His mother was an immigrant from Germany, and his father was from Poland. Sam rose through the ranks of Chicago society first as a prominent lawyer, then a Senator, and then Corporation Counsel for the city of Chicago. It was under these auspices that he became right-hand man to Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson, better known as “Big Bill,” and even better known as one of the most crooked mayors in the history of this country. Such cheery events such as the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred during Big Bill’s tenure. When the Mayor hit the drink a little too hard, he would hand the reins over to my cousin, and Senator Sam Ettelson would essentially be in charge of Chicago for the night. Big Bill Thompson was driven out of office once in 1923, but ushered back in with the help of his buddy Al Capone in 1927.

In those in between years, my cousin Sam would become unwittingly embroiled in what would become known as the “Crime of the Century.” I had always known the story of  Leopold and Loeb, the two young men who mercilessly murdered a young school boy named Bobby Franks. It has been the basis for countless films, plays, and books—most notably Hitchcock’s experimental thriller Rope. What I didn’t know was my family’s involvement in the mystery. The parents of the young victim were Jacob and Flora Franks, a Jewish family that had renounced their faith to become Christian Scientists. They were also close, personal friends with Sam Ettelson. When the Franks received a ransom note from Leopold and Loeb, notifying them that they had Bobby, Ettelson was called on to handle the affair. Senator Sam knew the Leopold family and was a mover and a shaker in the Jewish Community of Chicago. Sam called on his contacts in the Chicago police department to try and sort things out. But by that point it was too late. The ransom note had only been a cruel ruse. The boy, Bobby Franks, had already been found dead. After years of public service, the legacy of my distant cousin Sam Ettelson will forever be defined by his involvement in this bizarre and tragic episode of Chicago history.

Leopold and Loeb

Time Travel

by Zoe Pollak

From a young age, I have always wanted to time-travel. When I read books, I not only imagine myself in the place of the characters, but picture my life in the pages’ long-passed histories, a Zoe plucked out of today and teleported to 1760s Europe, 1850s South, or 1940s nuclear America. When I watch black and white movies, I long to travel to the forties, a time when Cary Grant flashed his dazzling smiles and candy cost a penny and everything seemed so much more simple.

I’m fairly sure I can place my scientific interest in time travel to my junior year of high school when I started getting several hours of homework every night. I’d sit at the computer screen and procrastinate from my essays by reading science articles theorizing the possibilities of time travel. I mulled over the grandfather paradox for more than an hour one night, imagining what would happen to me if I went back fifty or sixty years in time and prevented my grandparents from meeting. If I succeeded, would I slowly fade from every photograph with me in it, like Marty in “Back to the Future”? If I’d been actually able to kill my grandfather, would I die the moment he did? Questions like these entertained my imagination for the better part of last year as ways to escape the ever-present awkward age of high school. As I traversed the pages of Steven Hawking’s ideas concerning parallel universes and listened to YouTube clips of Michio Kaku talk about pretzel-shaped worm-holes, I wanted more than anything for the possibility to go back to my childhood and appreciate what I had taken for granted.

But eventually I had to acknowledge a paradox equally mind-boggling as the scientific conundrums attached to time travel: if I could somehow find a way to go back in time to the streets and houses of my childhood, not only to observe the events of my life fold out again before me , but to actually take the place of the five-year-old who is now nonexistent (but remains fragmented, encapsulated in my memory), I’d be too precocious for childhood’s innocence. I’d be an extremely stressed-out child, petrified with worries about the future and unable to function.

While climbing the back of the Lawrence Hall of Science whale or creating patterns in the woodchips of the Berkeley Jewish Community Center, I wouldn’t be able to live in the moment. Even if time travel were possible, my brain has developed too many circuits that frenetically wind around each other in order to go back to the childhood I so fondly remember.

And then there’s the issue of nostalgia. My mind has blocked out most of the excruciating, annoying, and agonizing events of being a kid. When I look back and try really hard to remember more than the just the positive aspects of kindergarten, I start to envision a little Zoe, terribly frustrated at not being able to express herself when she didn’t have enough words to sound astute or credible. As a kindergartener, I was perplexed at my mother’s sarcasm and puzzled by my father’s quietness. Cursive baffled me, as did fast typists. I wanted so much to be able to sit in the front seat, but had to sit in the back because of the air-bag hazard. Little dissatisfactions like these were, I’m sure, foremost and pressing in my five-year-old consciousness.

Nonetheless, when I get home from school with six or seven hours of homework due the following day, I still wish I could shrink and flatten myself out so that I could enter the photographs of my elementary school days, where my vivacious friends and I exist frozen, mid-smile, mid-laugh, mid-sentence, embalmed in two dimensions.

Crowdsourcing Works!

When I announced that I would be calling on the world at large to help solve the mystery of my name, effectively crowdsourcing the task, I didn’t expect much to come of it. Honestly, it seemed like a way of making a pretty tremendous proposition more manageable and using a catchy web neologism. But, within a day of posting my inquiries, I received some useful replies. In the battle for efficient use of my time, Gmail and Facebook have scored a rare victory.

Via email, my sister Kim sent this:

I don’t have many facts – mostly lots of guesses. The Wegbreits lived in Warsaw. At one point in time, Warsaw was in Germany. Now Warsaw is in Poland.  My thinking was that we got the name from when it was Germany. Jewish people didn’t used to have last names.  Instead, the word “ben” – “son of” was used.  As in David Ben Eliot.  At one point in time, Jews were forced to take last names.  Usually were descriptive of their profession. In our case, “Wegbreit” means “broad street” so my guess is that we lived on a big street. Or maybe our ancestors were street cleaners.

via Crowdsourcingdirectory.com

My Uncle Marty sent me this on Facebook:

A little family history.  The ancestry on the Wegbreit side is Polish, near Warsaw.  The name is German and does mean “way-broad” or Broadway.  For a brief period around 1798 – 1802, the Germans occupied that part of Poland and forced the local Jews to have last names, not just “David son of Ben.”  Our ancestors apparently lived by a wide road, hence, Wegbreit.  On the other hand, I have seen the name written as Wejcrecht, perhaps bad handwriting or maybe the real name.  As you say, a mystery.

With these, I have not only some more hope for this venture but a few pieces of important evidence:

1. We’re from Warsaw or outside Warsaw.
2. We lived in Poland from around 1798 to 1802.
3. An alternative spelling of our name “Wejcrecht” or, possibly, evidence that I can blame my half-assed penmanship on genetics.

At a glance, Google and Babylon Polish translation yield nothing with the new name, but so far we have a couple of interesting hypotheses:

1. We lived on a big street
2. We are not really Wegbreits, but just have poor hand writing.
3. We were street cleaners

Over the next week, I’ll reach out to more Wegbreits to see if they have any thoughts to add. I’ll also start following up on the alternative spelling and Warsaw leads and try to study effective crowdsourcing. Any suggestions regarding Warsaw resources? Polish name resources? Crowdsourcing resources?

For now, have courage, and take heart the next time anyone tells you Facebook and email are giant wastes of time.

The horror of looking too skinny in front of your Jewish grandmother

“Where is your butt? What happened to it?” my babushka exclaimed when I came home for the first time in months. “Did you leave it in New York?”

“You look like you came out of a death camp,” my mom seconded.

The lovely mama-babushka duo.

I had just arrived back to San Francisco after settling into adult life on the East Coast.  For the record: I lost maybe 5 pounds over a few months as a result of stress while job hunting. (I know this because my mother forced me to get on the scales as soon as we arrived from the airport.) And even I know that’s not worth making a Holocaust joke.

We left the former Soviet Union when I was five and as part of the Russian diet, I grew up eating dishes hidden with globs of butter and sour cream.  But as I acquired American tastes – and somewhat leaner cravings – I began to request my olivier salad with low-fat mayonnaise and my borscht sans cream.

This never fazed either mama or babushka, because God Forbid their prized eldest daughter/grandchild succumb to the trend of obesity in our new land. How then would she ever be able to nab her perfect Jewish husband? (This has been a preoccupation, and dream, of theirs for me since we immigrated here in ‘92. And probably before I was born).

Don’t get me wrong: I still love Russian food. Everything from peirogi to grechnivaya kasha makes me miss a country I don’t remember living in. I spent only five years in Ukraine, but its smells still manage to inspire nostalgia.

My babushka tried teaching me how to cook the traditional Ukranian dish galuptzi for “Yelena’s Story.” (Also, I think, with the goal of landing said husband in mind). Though I haven’t attempted the feat again on my own,  I’ve been cooking since graduating in May (nothing special, but enough to acquaint myself with the stove to live off of pasta and rice during my subsequent unemployment).

Maybe I looked so gaunt because I gave up restaurants to cook on the cheap with little oil and whole wheats only. But try explaining healthy eating to your Jewish grandmother and end up with a spoon of sour cream down your throat.

See my sad attempts at living up to our culinary heritage below. (Yes, for some inexplicable reason, I am wearing fake nails for the entirety of the cooking lesson).

The Beginning: My Side.

By Jason Zavaleta

I grew up in California, and my Grandfather lived in New York.  Every year, at least once, from the time I was a year old my family would go out to visit my Grandparents. When I’d see him, I’d get bombarded with hugs and kisses, and all I wanted to do was play. He used to tell me inappropriate jokes that my mother would always scold him for. Some things were special though. He loved chess, and I’d always challenge him to a game after dinner at his house. Of course, I’d always lose, but it was fun to test my skills against the champion. Then there was the famous “Grandpa Tickle”. Which was a combination between a massage and a good scratch on your back while lying down, and every time he did it to me, I’d be asleep within five minutes. My Grandfather always made me laugh, and I know I made him laugh too. I loved him, and I know he loved me too. Every holiday, no matter how small, and often I didn’t even know it existed, he’d send a cute card with a note and a gift. Then when I got older, things changed.

When I was ten or eleven, my Grandmother got sick. A still unnamed neurological illness caused her pain and forgetfulness. My Grandfather now had to spend all his time taking care of her. Soon, when I came to visit, I was doing work, I was helping, and listening to the many conversations he was having with my mom about my Grandmother’s health. I was left pretty much in the dark. Year after year, she got worse, and soon, so did he.

By the time I was 14 my Grandmother was in a nursing home, and not doing well. The last time I went to New York before her death, my Grandfather had pretty much become a stone. No laughs, no “Grandpa Tickles”, and he had grown to ill and tired for a chess game. I was angry, and I felt like going to New York had become a burden. Suddenly my Grandmother decided to stop living, and I flew out to sadly, see her pass. After that, my Grandfather was not the same. He kept talking about how he wanted to die, and our conversations on the phone were short and insignificant.

Meanwhile,  a important event in my life was taking place. I had gotten into a relationship with a girl, Alex was her name. Her and I had been friends on and off for about two years, until suddenly in 2007, we started to date. We were working on my first high school film together. Her the leading female role, I the director. It was a great experience, and it somehow brought us together.

A picture of Alex I took on set, before we were together...look closely...

We connected in that special way very fast. We were both into humanities and social service and doing work to make a difference. Our spiritual paths were almost on the same page, while still different, we connected on multiple levels. I would always think about her and my relationship like that of my grandparents. Met young, at 16, got married and 17 and lived together the rest of their lives. I thought her and I would be the same way. But ironically, the deaths of my grandparents caused harsh changes in Alex and my relationship.

When my Grandmother died, I thought it would be a lesson to help me treasure her even more. And it did for a long time, but when my Grandfather passed. I felt like all the hope had been sucked out of the hope of the relationship as Alex and I were in a rough time, right around when he passed. We had been together for almost two years. It was so sad, that with the death of both of my Grandparents, it was like that love that I idolized so much that they had, faded, and my relationship too, faded.

From my eyes, this story is starting to unfold…

Ah! Sha-nan-agans!

bull⋅shit

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// ]]> /ˈbʊlˌʃɪt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [bool-shit] Show IPA noun, verb, -shit⋅ted or -shit, -shit⋅ting, interjection Slang: Vulgar.

–noun

nonsense, lies, or exaggeration.

Shmegegge

-noun
(Yiddish) baloney; hot air; nonsense

 

 

The Bible of the Future

Until this past week, I’d been writing this blog blissfully unaware of where the hell I was going with it.  I figured I’d write some stories about loosely related topics and, you know, stuff would happen, and it would be a coherent text.  This sounded reasonable until I tried to explain it out loud, at which point it completely fell apart.  So, in our meeting last week, one of the main questions was what would be my guiding principle.

Another question was what exactly was Jewish about this whole thing.  I had some vague idea about kibbutzim and tikkun olam, but that too was kind of hard to explain.  But after a good bit of discussion, an idea emerged.  My blog was about planning for the future, so why not write about the roll Judaism would play in that future?  The Torah has guided us for the past 5,000 years, but are its values still relevant?  And, if not, what values are?

I, of course, interpreted this as “make your blog the Torah of the future,” which sounded awesome, so I decided to do it.  But that made me wonder, what is the Torah?  I know it’s that blue book where “awesome” doesn’t mean cool and people lived for like 500 years, but what was its purpose?  Was it an historical document (note: I can’t stand using “an” before historical, but whatever)?  A book of morals?  A guide for everyday living?  I decided to investigate.

And, as with any good research project, I began by turning to Wikipedia, and just opening an obscene number of tabs.

Not Joking

The first thing I learned was that while I thought that the Torah (you know, the scroll with the crown) was the same thing as the Old Testament, there’s actually a little more to it than that.  What I thought of as the Old Testament is actually the Tanakh, which consists of the Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings).  And while it seems like the Torah and Nevi’im were written at about the same time, Ketuvim came later.  But now for the weird part.

Up until around the 17th century, it was generally assumed that Moses was the sole author of the Torah (thus, the Five Books of Moses).  However, this overlooks some pretty significant evidence to the contrary.  First of all, there’s God.  While it’s generally acknowledged that there’s a difference between the “Old Testament God” and the “New Testament God”, there are some bizarre inconsistencies even within the Torah.  Sometimes He/She’s loving, sometimes He/She’s vengeful.  Sometimes He/She appears all-powerful, and at others He/She’s almost human.  This, plus the fact that several sections are just repetitions of earlier sections, suggests that either Moses was a terrible writer, or there was more than one person working on this thing.

Until recently, the most common explanation was what is called the Documentary hypothesis.  The idea is that the Torah is made up of four separate texts that were eventually edited together.  These texts, the Jahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly, all tell related, sometimes overlapping stories, but each comes from a unique perspective.  For example, the Jahwist text favors the southern tribes of Israel, whereas the Elohist favors the north.  For some reason, I find this hilarious.  It’s like the Union and the Confederacy getting together to write a textbook.

The Deuteronomist focuses mostly on the story of Moses, but also spends a great deal of time outlining a code of Jewish law.  The fourth text, the Priestly, presents God as much less human than in the previous versions, and as only being accessible through, you guessed it, priests.  For example, in the Jahwist, God is constantly interacting with humans, capable of showing emotion, and indeed much more similar to other ancient gods.  In Priestly, on the other hand, God is portrayed as the sole creator of the world.  On a completely unrelated note, Priestly is also regarded as less literate and less elegant than the other sources.

Each of these texts also have their own unique origin.  As mentioned earlier, the Jahwist and Elohist seem to be collections of stories, histories, and traditions from southern and northern Israel, respectively, whereas Deuteronomist and Priestly appear to have been constructed with specific goals in mind.

And yet somehow, all four of these texts were combined to create something that looks like this:

If you scan this at a supermarket, you get a free Mr. Pibb.

And while it’s now believed that the text may not fall into four neat categories like this, it’s generally agreed that it was written by a bunch of people writing for a bunch of reasons.  So in the end, it turns out the Torah isn’t just a moral code.  Or an (dammit) history.  Or even a book of laws.  It’s all of them.  Which brings me back to the blog.

In some ways, it’s remarkable how long the Torah has survived.  From what I could tell from my three hours of research and a course on ancient history I took four years ago, the Jahwist and Elohist texts are very similar to any of a number of ancient stories.  And yet it isn’t Zeus that over half of the people in the world worship.  There’s something about the Torah that is particularly appealing.  And perhaps (and I’m going way the hell out on a limb on this one) what makes it so enduring is its editing.  It took the best aspects from a number of specialized sources, and combined them in a way that speaks to everyone.  And perhaps that should be my goal: diverse sources, unified message.  Hey, if it’s good enough for the Torah…

Facebook Group

A couple weeks back, when suggesting the idea of creating a facebook group to advertise the project, I joked about making a group titled “Do You Like Learning About Your Great GrandFather?”  This dream has now become a reality (click here to see said reality) and while somewhat joking, hopefully it will attract some attention to the project.

Glimpsing

by Yenny Martin

Although my cousin and I were slightly afraid and timid in his presence, my feeling of my grandfather Leonard was of love and of respect. Stories of him are filled mostly with ferocious daring, so I had begun to picture him only with those traits. I was surprised when my dad told me recently he was an “extremely sensitive and introverted person,” describing him as emotional. My grandmother, he said, viewed him as alike Dimitri in The Brother’s Karamozov—the emotional, temperamental, blunt brother. According to Susi, Leonard viewed himself as Aloysha, the gentle and sensitive one, which Susi laughed at. A new image of him developed in my mind as I sifted through photos of Leonard with his sons. They are full of tenderness and easiness. This is the first glimpse I’ve had of fatherly affection in Leonard, as my father’s

stories translate a harsh, heavily-demanding father. My dad said as Leonard developed gout and became pressured by work, he had “no patience with adolescents struggling within their physical changes,” who are “drawn into this different world”. My father was awkward as a teenager, he said, with a long skinny neck, and Leonard was very hard on him. In these pictures Leonard very much resembles my father: their long legs and the way, as my dad ages, their shoulders slant downward and their upper-backs arch.

Leonard and my dad

Very recently we came across a letter of Leonard’s addressed to my grandmother abroad, during an extremely turbulent time in their marriage. It was in 1968 as Leonard’s project “The Cannery” had opened—and brought upon them financial difficulties—and as the brothers were headed off to college. I was moved by this very sweet and genuine letter, which began by addressing their situation and how much he missed her, then branched off about their daily affairs and how things were running on his end. The letter was interspersed with short paragraphs of his love for her, interrupting talk of The Cannery and the whereabouts of “the boys”—these short bursts saying their love was more important than what may obscure it, and always addressing her as “darling.” He said he was not trying to play games or impose himself on her, or bother her in self-imposed exile. This other side to him comes as a surprise but, also, is not. Leonard and Susi’s children of course inherited their traits, and all are rascally in their own way, but very sensitive and gentle. I’ll talk more about that later.

Leonard and Steve, my uncle

Leonard and Andy, my dad

Sides

by Yenny Martin

To understand my family I cannot leave my grandfather out, who through influence of behavior and blood moved its course from the tracings laid out by Susi. He was a fiery and rascally character who in the womb had been pummeled around in his mother’s war-time escape from Russia. With deeply Russian features and tall, strong frame, I remember him as a power of our family, the leader. I realize now that perhaps our family’s feeling of interconnectedness was lost in the absence of this man’s conspicuous strength. His death, I very little understood—in hearing “cancer” I assumed it was common enough to be shaken off, and “death” was too detached to trigger emotion. Only when we visited him as he lay in his room on a rented cot, did I understand its force.

Leonard on the right

Before I entered, my cousin asked the nurse within if I would be scared. She said it almost jokingly, without weight, and I had a similar attitude of distance. My cousin was temporarily living in my grandparent’s house, so she had many opportunities to visit him and was likely used to the climate and situation. When I walked in and saw Leonard sleeping, I was overwhelmed with a horrible sadness. He was so removed from the sturdy, upbeat, red-faced man I was used to—so polar from that image that he was unrecognizable. He was so thin, so pale and so weak, breathing heavily with delicate eyelids of lead. He was suddenly many years older, floating in lightened weight but pressed reliantly into the pillow. I gazed for only a few moments at this pitiful sight and wished to become closer to him in some way. But in the burden of unexpected and ungraspable sadness, I felt a subtle need to escape. My cousin quickly suggested to go play in the yard and headed toward the door. I followed.

I think now, part of the shock of seeing him was in his resemblance to his four sons. Seeing his sunken, skinny face and neck diminished to strings of skin stretched by a backward tilted head, was seeing our family’s source withering.

If I could change one thing in life, I would have stayed until he woke up. During the scattering of his ashes under a great redwood by their house (where my grandma’s ashes were later strewn too) I again felt removed from the weight of the situation. I saw my mother and other family members crying, and my cousin and I began to giggle in discomfort. But when it came my turn to sprinkle the ash, I felt its softness and tenderly carried it up to the tree-base, the last touch of my grandfather.

The memories of Leonard are a mix… images of angry yelling, images of apprehension, images of softness. In my grandmother’s journals of later years was an entry of when I was little—it spoke of me staring at Leonard very keenly at their dining room table and proceeding to walk up and sit on his lap. I also have a distinct image of him choking at dinner: at his birthday celebration at a Chinese restaurant, he suddenly began to cough severely, his face turning red. We all stopped to watch him struggle and I again felt a wave of remorse as my grandfather, in contrast to his usual energetic resiliency, and amidst all his family, was vulnerable.

treading water

Hannah

I am up to my ears in bits and pieces. I am immersed in parts of my family’s story, in clues to follow-up on, in tales that must continue to be reinvented, imbued with life. But because there is so much, so much, so much time gone by and so much family I must consult with before the opportunity to know my story is carried downstream, I am just treading water.

Remaining stagnant is not sustainable. My legs rotate, kicking swiftly so that my head can burst through the surface. Greedily, I gobble oxygen, my sustainer.

The weather gets choppy and I tire from this constant scramble. The heaviness of these thoughts, the unforseen barriers push down on me and I sink slowly.

But with all of that salt around me, how could I forget the tears of my ancestors? It is just this heaviness that surrounds me that will also help me to float. The ocean is a force much greater than just a person and even rocks can be broken down to sand by the waves that lap persistently.

Another Birthday, Another Cupcake

by Zoe Pollak

I chose a new photograph to write about this weekend, and it just so happens that it revolves around another Boulder birthday with Hannah. After my mother and I had finished our pieces and began to read the other’s writing, I commented on her broader approach, noting her more general response in comparison to the directness of my story’s recount. My mother then reminded me that I have a clearer memory of this instance in time than she, partly because I chose the photograph (she chose last week’s photo), and partly because my own childhood is the subject. I found it interesting to note that my mother had forgotten that it was actually Hannah’s birthday and assumed it was my own, a deduction most viewers would make without more context.

Again, we waited to read the other’s post until we both had finished.

Savoring the moment

Me: 

As I looked through the photo albums for a picture to reflect on this past weekend, I came across another photo of Hannah and me that I remember clearly being taken. My mother is most likely the photographer here (most mothers place their children in the center of the photo), while Hannah sits at the very border, not at all content with being in the background. She glares at me while I concentrate on blowing out the single candle atop yet another cupcake of my pre-school days. It obviously isn’t my first birthday here, nor is it my birthday at all. In fact, we were celebrating Hannah’s fourth birthday, and this time I was jealous because she had four candles on her cupcake while mine had none. I asked her mother if I could also have a candle, to which Hannah protested, so we ended up compromising. Neither one of us, however, felt satisfied. I was still slightly miffed (though I didn’t voice my disappointment) at having only one candle, which seemed immensely trivial in comparison to the symmetry of Hannah’s four dancing flames. My best friend was annoyed in principle that I even got one candle at all. This photograph perfectly captures our stubbornness; I had waited to blow out my candle until after Hannah made her birthday wish so that I could claim the limelight a little longer. I remember being well aware of Hannah’s disapproval, but my awareness of her dissatisfaction didn’t get in the way of my wish-making.

My mother:

Looking at this photo of Zoë—her hair pulled away from her face and  gathered in a fountain of curls at the top of her head, her chubby child’s fingers braced on either side of her on the table—it looks as if blowing out a birthday candle were as demanding an activity as pole-vaulting. I guess it is, for a three-year-old, each year a sea of time that must be crossed before the next birthday celebration can begin and a new group of presents arrives. In one of our home movies, a Zoë barely two sits on a couch and sings “Happy Burday” to herself repeatedly while she plays with some kind of wooden puzzle or toy, oblivious of the camera’s eye upon her.
I cannot help smiling as I recall her high sweet voice absently sing this paean to herself, the notes rising and falling tonelessly in imitation of the cadences of the song.

     Hannah is in this photo, as she is in most of the pictures taken of Zoë during our two years in Boulder. But here my daughter’s friend is pictured off to one side while Zoë herself sits front and center, no doubt enjoying the sweet and much waited for victory of the birthday celebrant, who is permitted on this day as no other in the year to enjoy her celebrity status. Zoë looks down at the cupcake, while Hannah looks either at her, or it—I can’t tell which. I am certain, however, of the feeling on her face—the very picture of envy, the same face grownups try hard to hide but which occasionally stares out from newspaper images when a sidelined politician gets caught unawares. Hannah’s jealousy was, I’m sure, momentary, and nothing like the poisoned attitudes of adults slow to shake off their own ill will. Still it’s interesting to look at her fingers, which may be simulating the action of blowing out the candle herself. Or perhaps she is playing with them to keep herself from snatching the coveted icon on the table.

     For a group of middle-class parents, the toddler birthday party has become as much a political event as the office Christmas party, complete with paid entertainment and predictable bad behavior. The ones we held back then in Boulder featured barnyard animals rather than circus acts– games of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” and “Duck Duck Goose” and not professional jugglers or off-duty clowns. Still, even the old-fashioned kind of celebration had its difficult moments.

By Any Other Name

Question: How does a family with little German heritage get a German surname?

Answer: To  be determined.

As family mysteries go, ours is small but puzzling. Our name, Wegbreit, is distinctly German, meaning something like “Broadway” or “wide street,” but we have few ties to Germany.  We did not suffer the indignity of changing our name because we felt ours was ill-fit for the new country, nor were we subject to the dislocation of having our name forcibly changed. Just as there are a handful of Wegbreits in America, there are Wegbraits in Argentina. So, blame cannot lay on Ellis Island.

So far, the best guess anyone has been able to muster is that, though our ancestry is vaguely Eastern European, we lived in Poland, which was then part of Prussia for some time, and … mumble, mumble, mumble. The translation of our name is not immediately revealing, either, suggesting no obvious profession or location.

My familial ignorance is not quite this profound, but, as my hedging above suggests, it is vast and I find the gaps in my knowledge troubling. So, over the next months, with the help of this community, I would like to set about seeing if I can solve this mystery. If you have facts, suggestions, or resources–say, an old professor of Jewish studies or a guide to German etymology–please share.

BURIED TOO DEEP.

Feeling is life and death. Nobody likes to feel the sorrow, the pain, or the emptiness. When those feelings do occur, the only way to work past them is to embrace them. If you don’t accept what is and cry out the pain then nothing will ever feel as good again. Feeling the pain is what makes the good so great. When happiness comes again,(because it always will), then one can learn to embrace that as well but stronger and feel it love it, and thrive off it.

This morning at our pancake breakfast, I was sitting at the table with my grandparents, my dad, and his girlfriend. Andy came up in conversation, and after a familiar uncomfortable silence my grandma spoke. I know it is extremely hard for her to dig up the grievous feelings but she tells me something my dad said a few years after Andy’s death which completely opened my eyes to the knowledge they’ve retained after this experience and how they have managed without him.

                My grandma begins to explain, “A few years after Andy’s death, Paul, I don’t know if he remembers this but he said to me, ‘Mom, we buried him too deep.’”

My dad paying his usual visit to Andy with his girlfriend who was meeting Andy for the first time.

                This one bold statement must have opened their eyes as well as mine to the fact that although someone is physically gone, you can never lose their spirit and you should never try to.

                Losing someone close is probably one of the hardest things to overcome in one’s life. I wouldn’t know what it feels like yet, but judging from my dad and grandparents, they must be so damn strong. They must have embraced the pain and accepted what is, because now, their excitement and joy of life shines on everyone and is some of the most contagious happiness I have ever experienced. Watching their strength, and feeling their love and happiness is an immense inspiration to me, I am constantly soaking in their wisdom like a sponge.

Proof of my sanity…or lack thereof….

By: Klaira

Just under a year ago, before the craze of online quizzes, constant status updates, and fortune telling applications, the loyal members of Facebook shared 25 interesting facts about themselves. This seems like one of the most sincere ways for people to socialize and get to know each other, instead of a generic quiz written for pure entertainment. It look me nearly a month to come up with my facts.

Here is a little peek into my “vita”.

I have always had a passion for telecommunications

1. When I was little, I would always get sick. My mom would “bribe” me with candy not to attend school.

2. I can easily drink a gallon of water every single day.

3. I am very good in remembering dates and random facts. Tell me your birthday, (unless I already know) and I will remember it for the rest of my life.

4. I actually stood in line for 4 hours on July 11th, 2008, the first release day of the 3G iPhone, just to see what kind of people have nothing else better to do. I do have to admit it was an entertaining wait and i got my iPhone

5. I don’t like rice. Well, only in Sushi. I can only imagine what is going through your head right now…

6. I have American relatives who have been living in the states for the past 60 years and don’t speak a word of Russian. It has been a pure miracle that we have found each other.

7. I can crack almost every major bone in my body

8. I have edited/shot, and acted in a documentary film about my immigration which has been shown all over the world. I give presentations about it to this day.

9. “Spicy” should me be my middle name. I am always up for something spicy with great flavor

10. I own more books than articles of clothing. Still can’t determine if it is a good or bad thing

11. I learned English by watching the Rugrats. How many of you remember that cartoon?

12. I can’t shop for more than 2 hours. I get extremely tired, dizzy and not to mention whinny (one of my few rare moments). Trust me; you don’t want to be next to me once the 1:59 mark has been hit.

13. My mom used to be a famous column writer and poetess for several popular papers back in Ukraine

14. I find that I am allergic to new things every day. These allergies come in all varieties, shapes, and sizes. Consider yourself warned: you can be next.

15. I completed two majors and a minor in college in 4 years. All because I was interested in almost everything so it was extremely hard to narrow it down. However, my senior thesis still remains as my biggest accomplishment.

16. My second bed is a movie theater. I have fallen asleep during 75.6% of the movies. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy them.

17. I started my own business selling special pens in 3rd grade. It got very popular and was very successful. Unfortunately, the dean of the school forced me to close it. Deep inside, I still think she wanted one of those special pens for free.

18. By the time I was out of middle school, I have finished writing two screen plays and a couple of chapters of a novel which is still in process of being finished and published.

19. I can get high (in my own definition) from the smell of early morning, the ocean, and the rain. In general, I adore nature traveling and exploring but don’t to take advantage of it that often.

20. Because of the insane amount of copying we had to do in 2nd grade, in order to develop our penmanship, I taught myself to write with both hands. This talent exists till this very day.

21. Maybe it is the inner child in me but I love board, card, and other games made for a group of people. Nothing is better than being with your friends laughing, exploring, and having fun-all together.

22. At 7, I made a bargain with God. Needless to say, the results were “interesting.”

23. I love coming up with new inventions to make life funer and easier. However, it turns out most of my creations already exist, even though I have never seen one. The day and I still young…

24. I don’t get offended that easily. Try me and you’ll see…

25. Growing up, I used to have a cat who had the same name as my next door neighbor. You can only imagine all drama that followed that, chances are you are right. Needless to say, my poor kitty committed suicide.

26. At 5, I finally started rolling my “Rs” by pronouncing a Russian swear word. Trust me, I had a blast practicing my new skill on the street while holding my grandparents’ hand. Great memories

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Hannah (As Seen Through Two Angles)

by Zoe Pollak

I decided to create another blogpost like the one I posted a couple weeks before this one. In this post, I again reflected on a photograph (only this time my memory played itself out more chronologically), and again I asked my mother to write about the photograph from her own perspective. And again, neither one of us saw what the other had written until we were finished. For this post, it is still interesting to compare the similarities/differences between writing styles, but even more so to focus on two different perceptions of one relationship.

Hannah has the darker hair (we were about four here).

Me: I don’t remember much about living in Boulder , and all of what I do remember involves snow, bagels, or Hannah, my best friend in pre-school. Hannah and I were best friends for only two years (the time my mother taught at the University of Colorado ), but this short duration by no means correlated with how close we were. We were inseparable, so every single memory I have of pre-school has her in it. Two memories show up with more clarity than others, probably because they had more gravity in my life as a four-year-old. The most dramatic memory involves blood.

For the most part, I was okay being subservient to Hannah- in fact, I was obsequious to her commands most of the time. If I ever protested (for example, if I wanted to play in the sandbox when she wanted to play in the gravel), she’d threaten that she “wouldn’t be my friend anymore,” . Every time this declaration worked in silencing my objections. But one day I worked up the courage to stand up for myself. Someone was having a birthday, and I was sitting with a group of my friends around the lunch table. As we eagerly waited for cupcakes, we talked about an upcoming sleepover. I told the group that I wouldn’t be able to make it, and Hannah then uttered her famous refrain. Before I knew it, my face was buried in her arm. As my teeth sinking into her skin, I heard her scream.  I let go to see deep-set bites, tooth-shaped pools of blood (perhaps over time my imagination has added a few flourishes to the medical severity of her wound). As Hannah yelped in pain, I suddenly felt nauseous, overcome with a strong wave of shame and regret. I slumped off into the playroom and deflated in a beanbag chair, while my sprinkled cupcake languished on the table.

Another memory, equally as traumatic, takes place at the Boulder planetarium. It was my fourth birthday, and my parents had bought a bunch of balloons, one for each partygoer (and one for the birthday girl, of course). My favorite color was pink, and coincidentally so was Hannah’s. As my mother distributed one balloon per kid, Hannah asked for the pink one. But I wasn’t having it; it was my birthday, after all. So I told my mom I wanted the pink balloon, ignoring her suggestion to share (how could a balloon be shared, anyway?). So Hannah ended up with no balloon, as it was either pink or nothing. But thankfully, the planetarium show and humongous supermarket cake covered in frosting distracted both of us from fighting for too long over the balloon. But when Hannah’s parents came to pick her up, she remembered the balloon and started screaming and crying for it (I only have two memories of her screaming, but now I’m noticing a few similarities between the two memories). My mother gently urged me to give it to her; there was a red one that no one had claimed, which was my second-favorite color. But because the pink one was so coveted, its value was priceless in my eyes. I refused to give Hannah the balloon, and so her parents dragged her away, kicking and wailing on all-fours, yelping like a dog. And then a surge of guilt (much like the regret felt after biting her) consumed me, and I ran after her with the first balloon I could lay my hands on (without verbally communicating, we both simultaneously decided that any balloon was in fact better than leaving empty-handed). But even though I ran as fast as I could (or so I remember), her parents’ pull was too strong for me to reach, and I watched helplessly as tears streaked Hannah’s cheeks and her arms and legs flailed, her screams diminishing in loudness as she disappeared from sight.

My mother: Hannah was Zoë’s best friend in Boulder. In this photo two small girls smile into the sun with almost identical expressions and the same assertive stance. Hannah is positioned slightly closer to the photographer—probably me—and Zoë’s hair is a blonde match to her friend’s darker curls. They could be sisters. I’m surprised to see that they were barely out of babyhood when they knew one another, because in my memory their bond seemed full of the kind of feeling I associate with far more grown-up friendships. In part the intensity of their association was a product of the twin forces of their equally strong and stubborn personalities. Each was fiercely determined to get her way, occasioning many spats and two spectacular fights. I was called at work one day after the first conflict by a school official who revealed that my daughter had bitten her friend Hannah hard enough to draw blood. The two, I learned later, when I questioned my daughter, had been in the midst of a contest of wills. They were friends again within the hour, but it was the first and last time Zoë—at least to my knowledge—ever physically hurt another child.

Even when it came to their disagreements the two were brilliantly matched and perfectly balanced, however, for during the second such brawl it was not Hannah but Zoë who had the upper hand. At Zoë’s fourth birthday party, Hannah became enamored of a particular balloon, and had to be dragged away at the end of the party kicking and screaming by her apologetic mother—the classic illustration of the toddler tantrum. Years later, long after we had moved away from Colorado, Zoë wrote to Hannah but received no reply—what occasioned this silence, we never knew. Had she moved away? In any case, my guess is that wherever she may be, her recollection of Zoë is as strong as is my daughter’s memory of her friend.

Starting with the lovely McAllister Street

An idea for my final project under the New Jewish Filmmaking Project has arose in my unfortunately-overstuffed brain. I would like to take a look at individual sections of North San Francisco that my family members are continuing to tell me stories about, and that are the areas that I adore. To begin with, I thought I’d start with the birthplace of my grandfather. Please check out the video below to hear more.

As Rudyard Kipling says, and I’m sure my grandfather (now living in Marin County) agrees, “San Francisco has only one drawback. ”Tis hard to leave.”

By: Samantha Abernathey

Two of Four

by Yenny Martin

My dad feels that Steve, his older brother, was affected more dramatically by the war—via its direct effects on Susi, their mother. Steve was born on the war’s cusp, in 1944, the eldest of four brothers. My dad says Steve reacted to the Holocaust’s underpinnings in a different way than the other three, as reactions are always unpredictable.

When they were little, Steve and my dad were extremely close. Being the first two in the world, they had time to themselves, retreating every year, for example, to their uncle’s farm. In these pictures they are extremely sweet together, natural as brothers are—two of the same taking care of each other.

Now, Steve’s and my father’s personalities—though they overlap some—are almost opposites. My dad says Steve reminds him of his ex-wife, who was conscious of her prominence and basked in it. Another way of describing their differences in growing up: Steve was

a fan of Pat Boone, my father of Elvis. Pat Boone was accepted and white-shoed, where Elvis stuck out against that  look.

My dad feels that general internal complexities profoundly and fundamentally effect Holocaust survivors, and through them, their offspring. He says Steve was proud to drive to work as a doctor, to be part of the workforce; that perhaps this was partially a desire to be accepted where internally, with the burden survivors and their children bear, he stood apart.

My dad feels that through these extreme and hidden pressures, Steve and he became separate and distant, that for a time Steve reacted by “acting out” (rather than turning inward).

This formality of detachment became a factor not too long ago. In fact they understand each other extremely well, my dad says, and I imagine they share more than at first it seems. Steve cares very much for my dad and is not afraid to express it, whereas my

father is more aloof and less willing to cross that bridge after recent family difficulties. Exactly what the misunderstanding between them was seems lost, an impenetrable glass barrier. My dad has never expressed his feelings for Steve apart from how he felt when he was younger, and in his company he is reserved.

When they were young, Steve apparently wasn’t a good fighter. There was a rumor one day that someone belonging to Steve’s group of friends had been beaten up. All day my dad worried, thinking it might be Steve. Upon arriving home and seeing his brother unharmed on the couch, he felt immensely relieved.

Steve

Andy, my dad

Influences

by Zoe Pollak I sometimes wonder if I’d be interested in writing if my mother weren’t a writer. Ever since I was little she encouraged me to read and write, whether for a school assignment or for pleasure. I don’t actually remember her praising my writing or any specific prompts she suggested because our exchanges were so frequent that they were taken for granted, like white noise. I do, however, remember some books she gave me when I was older. In elementary school and middle school, Coffee Will Make you Black and Bee Season were two books that made a huge impression on me. Both centered on adolescent girls, these books taught me to see differently through different kinds of language. Throughout middle school, I went to my mother with questions about what I read. But I never received a definitive answer; I was answered with more questions. When I was younger I felt annoyed with these circumlocutions and wanted simple responses. Now I realize she was teaching me to be open and to respond to the world around me with questions of my own. In seventh grade, for an assignment, we were told to bring in a favorite excerpt from a book we had read. I brought in the following passage from Bee Season. This passage describes a hand-made kaleidescope: “A spiral of shoes of decreasing heel heights cycles from brown to orange as it winds its way to a center of earrings whose shapes and colors form a pattern of stripes and circles in sparkling metal and rhinestone. The shoes are framed by pens and pencils stacked at careful angles to form a free-standing fence of contrasting colors and shapes, the curve of a pen’s tip set off by the blunt end of an unused pencil. An arrangement of pink erasers becomes the flesh of a creature governed by the laws of geometry.             “The transition from shoe to wineglass is barely perceptible, the shoes as they stretch toward the glasses actually assuming shapes that reflect or contain a wineglass within them. The perimeter is composed of glasses lying lengthwise on the floor, but with the aid of marbles, beads, and shot glasses, the line arches upward in a graceful curve to join a column of stacked wineglasses, brandy snifters, and champagne flutes reaching higher than Saul’s head. Occasional colors in the stems of the vessels form symmetrical patterns independent of their tower, balanced compositions of line and curve that catch and clarify the room’s light. When Saul gazes at the tower, he sees water reflecting the sun, he sees a night of stars, he sees the patient, timeless ice of the poles. He wants to stand at the center of the tower, the glass his second skin, its light beamed directly into his body (223-4).”             I read it aloud, and when I stopped the classroom was completely silent. The teacher asked me why I chose this piece. I didn’t really have an answer. I like the imagery is what I think I said to him. But now, I can see this passage was a precursor into my later and now current explorations with words. The strong prepositions and verbs connect the sentences as easily as the objects blend into each other , and I unconsciously liked the way the syntax mirrored its subject.             Today, I still appreciate this rhetorical device. And I have my mother to thank for introducing me to texts like these and asking me questions, for challenging any undeveloped assertion or inconclusive generalization I make out of laziness or fear of being challenged.

Lost Similarities

Reading through my Uncle Andy’s old letters he wrote during his voyage has been totally bizarre. I find that his style of writing and the way he writes his train of thought seems like a more sophisticated version of my own writing. Besides the fact that he is writing about his my own hopes and dreams, his experiences of adventure and travel, I also feel  another connection reading his work and listening to his tapes that I never would have imagined. By reading and hearing and looking at this man I never knew, he is quickly becoming a part of me, someone I am beginning to look up too. The only idol I ever had remotely had has been my dad, and now his brother who I never knew I feel closer to than ever…

Andys letter from fiji 10-1-83

I love reading this letter, I can tell he is enthusiastic in his writing not only because of his exciting travels but the way it is written fast and eager. He writes his letter half capitalized and half not just like I do when I am writing quickly.  This excerpt really intrigued me because of all the exciting things happening from climbing volcanoes to motorcycling to getting in trouble in local restaurants during stimulating conversations when he had to apologize for his “freedom of speech.”

Snapshots

by Zoe Pollak

Before I begin my blog-post, I wanted to include some preliminary ideas and quesitons for the multi-media exhibition:

For the multi-media exhibition, I will most likely use lots of photographs with embedded quotes. I will also include excerpts from conversations and formal writings, both from my family and from other writers. There is a film clip I’d be interested in including in the project, and maybe some family video clips.

For the audio portion, I will probably talk for part of it, but will allow other people (my mother) to express her/their own opinions and perspectives.

I am still thinking of a thematic layout for the weekly blog-posts, which ties in to some questions I have not resolved:

-Should I focus more on writing or coming-of-age and perspective changes? Or both?

-If the answer is both, how do I relate the two?

-How do I use a primarily visual medium (film) to incorporate writing?

-Are influences in writing style and perspective disparities related?

-How do I communicate my mother’s influence as a writer on my own writing (I’m not just talking about syntax or diction, but rather a more intellectual standpoint)?

I chose three photographs to describe. For each photograph, I used a couple of sentences to comment, and then I asked my mother to do the same (without having showed her my writing). In the end, I was interested in seeing similarities/differences in our writing and interpretations to examine her influence over my writing.

 

Mom: My parents look relaxed and happy in this photograph, upright but youthful as the trees behind them. The brook—or is it a lake?—in the background speaks to me of a slower time.

Me: My grandmother beams in this picture. Whether her ebullience is completely natural or is partially forced, however, is unclear; it is hard to not be intimidated by a camera, because with the awareness of a photograph’s permanence, one may feel forced to represent themselves as idyllic as possible for that tiny moment in time when the shutter opens and closes.

Mom: This Polaroid is over forty years old, but when I look at it now I notice not so much how much time has gone by but the ways in which our placement then reveals something about our characters now. My baby sister—still in many ways the most naïve and youngest-thinking of the four of us—sits beaming in the middle of the frame, flanked and protected by the rest of us. My two brothers hold onto the legs of the infant seat, twin reflections of one another. Since my brother David died some fifteen years ago my surviving brother Charles seems ill at ease, as if he could not find, or recognize, his own face in the mirror. And I sit in back of the other three—part of the group but also singular, as I feel—as we all feel, no doubt—today.

Me: A total representation of childhood innocence, my mother’s face (along with her siblings’ faces) glows, and their four pairs of eyes possess an openness free of adult contrivance.

Mom: I love to look at my daughter’s broad smile in this photograph—a smile she occasionally shows me now, and which almost always recalls for me those years when I could hold her baby weight in my arms. We look alike, here—I wonder what she will look like aside her own child, years from now?

Me: Here my mother is captured mid-phrase or mid-laugh. I can tell she is familiar with the photographer because her eyes are not guarded. My eyes, however, are less attuned to the camera, and while I look at it, I am not quite focusing.

The Influence of the Streets

The streets you resided in as a child stick with you for life. Your childhood home, so to speak, is where memories reside. I bet almost all of you reading this can remember the address, or at least the street name of the house where you began your life.

Central San Francisco in the 1940's

For myself, and those around me, I know that where you’re from can have a HUGE impact on your life. People feel a strong connection to the place in which they grew up.

Andy Strikes Back!

 

By Lee Goldin

That’s right NJFPeers, the Project’s favorite corporate prankster/Jewish Filmmaker Andy Bichlbaum—co-founder of the whimsical advocacy group “The Yes Men”—is back in the headlines. Andy and the Yes Men have previously taken on such nefarious adversaries as the Oil Industry, Haliburton, the news media, and even the US Government. Their strategy? Hold press conferences posing as representatives from these organizations, and suprise the world by offering to do the right thing—clean up after their messes, help their customers and fellow citizens, and tell the truth. When these organizations invariably deny that they will in fact be telling the truth and doing the right thing, the Yes Men point out the evils of the establishment and make us ponder how great our world could be if those in power opted to own up to their responsibilites.

 

The Yes Men’s latest target? The venerable US Chamber of Commerce, a powerful coalition of various corporate entities. The Chamber has recently suffered a PR fiasco as several high-profile members—-most notably Apple—have defected from their ranks, citing the Chamber’s refusal to support enviromental legislation. The Yes Men quickly saw a great opportunity for a prank and went for the jugular—staging a fake Chamber of Commerce news conference, where Andy took to the podium and declared that the Chamber was reversing its stance on enviromental policies and would indeed back legislation to enforce enviromental protection.

In the eternal race to be first rather than accurate, news networks quickly ran with the story, only to realize that they had once again been duped by the Yes Men. Fox New’s inept news team was in the middle of reporting the story when they awkwardly realized they had been had and stumbled as they retained their compsure. Classic, just classic. In a way, this is my favorite aspect of the Yes Men’s work, the way they expose corporate news as amateur, misimformed buffons who refuse to double check sources and back up unsubstaniated reports. The news networks always try to make the Yes Men out as childish dipsticks whenever they expose the prankster’s antics, but everyone always knows who the real chumps are: the media.

Usually the Yes Men escape prosecution, because the companies they have pranked realize that doing so would further expose their corruption. Despite their success in evading the law in the past, the Yes Men have found a formiddable opponent in the US Chamber of Commerce, who has a lot of muscle behind it. Have the Yes Men found their match? Will this be Andy’s last prank? This blogger doesn’t think so.

The NFJP cohort had a chance to interview Mr. Bichlbaum this past summer at the Castro Theater after his film “The Yes Men Save the World” screened at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Andy regaled the NJFPeers with the story of his first prank, his prankster philosophy, and escape plans. If you missed this interview, please enjoy some clips.

In Raw Form

by Yenny Martin

“Andy sucking on his bottle”—as said by my grandmother—is a phrase strange to hear. I don’t associate this Andy with my dad, but the idea is a familiar image, as if I had known him at the time. His growth, because I am similar to him in many ways, is not a world separated by leagues as vast as it appears. It seems to me that all people, though different in experience and point of view, have similarities in their journey through life. Growth in childhood and adolescence is formed by hitting on like ways of questioning, of bouncing between paths. People reach growth points with different speeds and orders and motivations, but they experience more or less the same driven emotions in individual ways. Perhaps this is part of the mysterious connection one may feel with the embedded atmosphere in old writings and pictures taken long ago—a connection increased by a kindred thinking-style of someone close: a path closer-understood.
Looking at pictures of my five-year-old father, I am full of affection for this little sprouting boy and feel a pull to play with and take care of him. It is not my father that immediately strikes me in these photos, but another family member with bursting personality, hungering to be set in movement beyond the page. My father in miniature stares at the camera, backed by a story unheard in still photographs. As he develops and discovers in a body limiting in its size and awkward-newness, his spirit is very much the same as now.

Impact(Revision)

(Click here.  This is meant as an audio aspect only)

Solomon Lowenstein, my great-great grandfather, was locked in a tumultuous debate with himself.  Half of him argued that God does exist, while the other half insisted the contrary.  This battle greatly affected all of his descendants, including me.  Today, my family is hardly actively jewish at all, which shows rather clearly which part of him won that battle.

The following poem is my attempt to get inside of my great great grandfathers head, to try andfeel at least some of the emotions he must have felt.

 

Who is he?

Who is this man

with my eyes

and my teeth

and my cheeks?

With my sparse hair

like tufts of downy clouds

and my eyes blue like deep ice

And what does this man believe.

For isn’t a man what he believes.

My cheeks are shorn of stubble,

the taste of pork is still heavy in my mouth

and I might believe in God.

What does this say about me.

I am ordained

yet do not lead a congregation,

I know I used to believe but

lately

I am not so sure.

Half of me stands defiant

tall and strong

like a bronze statue searing in the hot sun

arms crossed

head frozen mid shake

While the other half

stands beside

and screams at me at himself and at god

for forgiveness.

My head is sore from his tirade

and from the other’s silence

and little do I know that my children

and their children

and their children’s children

will also stand as I do now

and ask

Who am I?

 

This next poem is my attempt to convey my emotions on the matter through poetry.

 

Last Monday

or perhaps the Monday before that

(I do not remember)

Many of my friends

did not show up at school

and I realized that it was 

Yom Kippur.

As my footsteps bounced

off the cold metal lockers lining the halls

I wondered if Solomon

My grandfather

had realized

exactly how much his actions

his conflict

would affect me

and not just me

but my mother

brother

aunt

grandmother and father

and their parents

not to mention my countless cousins

removed cousins

and the like

I imagine that he did

and I can understand

for it is easier to do nothing

than try something

 

Atonement

This past Yom Kippur was the first one in five years where I fasted.  And it sucked.  As I entered the 22nd hour, I was doing laps in an olympic-sized pool of self-pity.  For perhaps the first time ever, I regretted taking a day off of work.  The whole time I kept thinking how unnatural the whole thing was.  I was hungry.  There was food.  I should eat.  It went against every animal instinct I had not to eat.

But it was at this point that some part of my hunger-addled brain began to flicker.  How great is it that we can not eat–for fun.  Sure, I could’ve eaten any of a number of things lying around the house.  Or I could’ve gone out and ordered food.  Or I could’ve called a phone number, and they would have brought food to me.  In other times and other places, being presented with all of those options would have been nothing short of a miracle, and fast or no, something to be taken advantage of.

But because food is so plentiful, we have the choice not to eat it.  It’s like the old joke about how you never visit the legendary landmark next door until someone comes to visit you.  Since you know it’s always going to be there, you don’t feel the need to take advantage of it immediately.  And so it is with food.  The more we have, the less we need.  In a time when food was scarce, sure, it made sense to produce as much as possible.  I mean, if you weren’t sure if the Golden Gate Bridge would be there tomorrow, I’m pretty sure you’d start sightseeing the hell out of it.

Of course, none of this helped the fast go any faster, and it was still a relatively uncomfortable two hours.  And as soon as 6:06 rolled around, I went after the snack tray as if the dolmas might evaporate any second.  However, it did make me think, which I guess is the spirit of the holiday.  It also reminded me of an article I read a while back.

The article was about the “tragedy of the commons”, the idea that if there is a limited resource, people will try to get as much of it as possible for themselves.  However, if everyone does this, the resource runs out and everyone loses.  But, if we know we have enough, we can feel safe taking what we need, and nothing more.

Facebook Experimentations

Hey there everyone,

So I decided to choose the networking option of creating a quiz that would link back to my blog, so I was hoping everyone would take a look. Here’s the link!

Click for quiz ^^

Thanks all!

The Difference of One Letter

By: Klaira

It’s September 17th, 2004. I enter my first college class and  become one the thousands of excited and eager freshman faces who are overwhelmed by the never ending possibilities of the next four years.  As I find a seat in the crowded auditorium, I look at the individual trying to read the roster followed by faded variations of “Here” and “Present” all around me. In reality, the situation to me is quite too common:

Long Pause…
“Klll-”, Pause. “Kla-”.

The individual looks perplexed.
I raise my hand. “Here.”.
“How do you pronounce it?”
“Klav-di-ya”

Silence. My professor still looks confused.

“You can call me, Klaira” I say with a smile.
His body language shows relief but the mouth still struggles to say it.

Success! I have converted yet another. It is all too funny to me.

You see, to give a Jew a Jewish name in the former USSR in the 1980s was equivalent to giving up everything you and your ancestors had worked for– not even to mention inviting additional anti-Semitism and discrimination. Thus, in order to be sly and avoid such a predicament, my parents changed my name from the intended “Klara” to “Klavdiya” or Klava for short. “It it just one letter, but what a difference does it make!” I would hear every single time my great-grandmother’s name is mentioned. It was true: by changing one letter of my name; I became a goy.

Both, or rather three, of my names have become a secret identity. My close friends know me as Klava, and I’m Klaira, my designated Jewish name, to everyone else. Very seldom the two meet. Klava has won a couple of scholarships while Klaira has created a documentary film, earned a double major, and traveled all over the United States and  little bit of Europe. At times, I have thought about changing my name officially but I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter what my “actual” name is on the passport but rather the persona by which I am known and respected.

What is my name? Well,  I have always admired my great grand mothers’ witty response. “You can call me what you want; just don’t get me in the oven.”

Paint Your Street

by Lee Goldin

We’re all familiar with the timeless adage “write what you know,” and it continues to guide writers both young and old. The NJFP has long offered a unique opportunity for young Jewish filmmakers to “film what they know,” taking us on tours of their  homes, histories, streets, and cities—exploring their fears, passions, and dreams. And now that the NFJP cohort and alums have embraced a common theme of Half Remembered Stories, we have started to “write what we half know,” and “film what we half remember,” as we trace our families and their faiths backwards towards the hazy horizon of history.

The parents of Asher Lev discuss the implications of his artistic inclinations in the Marin Theater Production of My Name is Asher Lev

About the time I joined the NJFP charter cohort, I discovered a gift of a novel titled My Name is Asher Lev, by the celebrated modern Jewish writer Chaim Potok. It tells the story of a young Hasid with extraordinary artistic abilities and vision who is forced to reconcile his conservative roots with the fearless hedonism required of a true artist. He finds his way under the guidance of fictional artist Jacob Caan, a fictional firebrand of a mentor who nurtures Asher’s amazing talents, while helping him navigate the godless religion of art even as God looks over the shoulder of young Asher through the piercing gaze of his disapproving parents. While Asher was a practicing Jew struggling to find his identity artist, I was a practicing artist struggling to find my identity as a Jew. This struggle is documented quite candidly in my voiceover for Not Another Jewish Movie. But ironically, it was my experience with the NJFP that allowed me to embrace my Judaism in ways I never thought possible. The project eventually gave me the inspiration to visit Israel, and explore the world through the eyes of a Jew.

In Potok’s novel, Asher refuses opportunities to explore the world, and chooses instead to remain in Brooklyn and paint the world around him. He paints his mother, his home, his neighborhood, and his life. As Asher puts it, he “paints his street.” Eventually his art hits too close to home when his parents attend one of Asher’s exhibitions. The centerpiece of the show is a pair of paintings which depicts his mother in the nude, crucified on the windowpanes of her window, flanked by Asher and his father.  It is blasphemy of the highest order. And it is beautiful. It is fearless, pained, and true. It is art.

The angsty teenage Lee of Not Another Jewish Movie is every bit the foil of young Asher Lev

When I first read the novel, I expected his parents to explode with anger, but they instead take the sting of seeing Asher’s stirringly graphic painting with a quiet agony that cuts deep into their hearts, as well as the heart of young Asher.
This past weekend, my father took my sister and I to see a stage adaptation of My Name is Asher Lev in Marin. The performances from the small ensemble cast were emotionally stirring. As the three of us sat there, tears rolling down our faces, we were all reminded of perhaps the strangest night of our lives.

The zany Levine family and friends in the musical comedy A Little Too Young, a thinly-veiled roman a clef about Lee's own family and friends.

I had written and directed a musical comedy titled A Little Too Young, which was about a misfit Jewish family and featured a cadre of zany characters which were all thinly-veiled versions of my real family and friends. It featured a character named Elliot Levine, who is based on my great grandfather Lee Ettelson, who I have dedicated many words on this site. Elliot (nee great grandpapa) discovers the original burning bush of Biblical fame, which his great grandkids Rose and Elliot (nee my sister and I) find is merely a highly hallucinogenic pot plant that never burns up and gets you so high you see God. It was High School Musical meets the Da Vinci Code—a whole bunch of singing, dancing, teenagers discover that religion is a crock of shit. I had fine-tuned the self-loathing angst of my Not Another Jewish Movie tirades into high-concept zaniness that delighted audiences. That was, except for my mother in father.

Like Asher’s painting, A Little Too Young exposed the weakness and fears of my loved ones as nakedly as the bare breasts of his tortured mother’s effigy. During the rehearsal process, this mattered little because I managed to compartmentalize my life in a way that my real friends and family were separated from their theatrical counterparts. This all came crashing to a halt on that strangest night of our lives, the night that EVERY SINGLE PERSON I HAD WRITTEN ABOUT ATTENDED THE SHOW. My parents, my sister, my friends, my ex-girlfriend, my professor—EVERYONE I HAD LAMPOONED IN THE SHOW—showed up and sat next to me.

When my parents stood up after the show and looked at me, I saw the same pain in their eyes that I had imagined were in those of the parents of Asher Lev when I read the book so many years ago. The eyes said “why? Why would you hurt us like this?” I looked back into their eyes as if to say, “I had to write what I knew. I had to paint my street.”

That night it snowed in Santa Cruz for the first time in decades, and a huge lightening storm descended on the sleepy beachside university town. It felt as though the heavens were rebuking me for my insolence. I had allowed two universes—one real and one theatrical—to collide into each other, and it had disrupted the flow of the real universe to the point that it was snowing on the beach. I was terrified of what I had done.

After the show we had a cast party at the house of the girl who played my mom, and all of my family and friends were hanging out with the people they had just seen making fun of them onstage. Some were having a blast—my sister especially—but the situation was awkward in a way I cannot describe with words. There is a picture of the real us standing with the fake us, and there is a look on my face of utter existential madness. When I found out that the girl who played my mom hooked up with the guy who played grandpapa, I had to leave. It was just too weird.

Three years later, my father sister and I relived that night in our heads as we watched the mirror story of Asher Lev unfold in front of us onstage. We turned to each other and all agreed “A Little Too Young.”

Leslie, Rose, Elliot, and Allan Levine

There are two ways to “write what you know.” You can paint your street, or explore the world around you with travel and research. I have found myself in a back and forth pattern between the two. After A Little Too Young I decided to write about something that was centuries and continents away from me, a play about Elizabethan playwright and spy Kit Marlowe. I was still writing what I knew, but I was writing what I knew about history and art, not my own life. The show was a flop, and never made it past the staged reading process. Clearly, my audience wanted more of the same. They wanted me to paint my street again. Under pressure from friends and colleagues, I penned a play titled Cabana Confessions about my experience as a pool boy at the legendary Dream Inn on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. It was exponentially raunchier than A Little Too Young, chock-filled with musical numbers, scantily-clad girls, and dirty jokes. The audience loved it, but I could barely sit through the damned thing. It was just trashy. But at least it didn’t hurt anyone but myself.

Cabana Confessions

After that, I decide to write what knew about two things I knew better than anything: James Bond and the JFK Assassination. Forever and a Day, my kitschy musical spy caper, premiered this summer at the Garage in San Francisco. My dad and my sister loved it.

With Half-Remembered Stories I have returned to writing about my family, but I have also tapped my interest in research to delve deeper than mere musical laugh-mongering. In this way, the NFJP manages to “paint our street” but also “explore our world.” Through our blogs we paint our streets with poetry and pictures, and in our films we paint the streets with a sublime reverence for who we are, where we have been, and where we are going.

Name is Insert Here
I am a Jew
I am an Artist
We are the NJFP
We Half Remember
We Never Forget

In Theory

My dad describes Susi’s nature as having a “bundled up aspect”. He feels it may have been from the unfolding of events in the 1930s and 40s—or from the burden of societal expectations, which now are far less restrictive for women. He says, “you and Daria [my sister] have her deep concentration, her thoughtful air and sensitivity. And above all a way of seeing that accounts for nuances — the ability to think an instant instead of pointing fingers. I believe that’s the one, miniscule good thing that’s seeped through to survivors of the holocaust: seeing the ambiguity in things.”

Susi did not believe in collective guilt: rather, she agreed with Elie Wiesel’s suggestion of collective innocence. On one hand, though she was a Czech Jew in Europe at the time of the Holocaust, she felt blame could be piled upon no one except the Nazis themselves; on the other hand—as in times of sheer madness, there is no easy position—she felt American Jews were as much victims as those directly influenced by the Holocaust. My father adds that all Jews, regardless of how close to the horror they were, are deeply affected by it—including generations that followed, impacted through the behavior and sensitivities of the first generation. He feels, moreover, that it is more difficult for American Jews to unearth these emotions and recognize their source, because their emotions are muted and far less strong: dormant. He feels, though the Holocaust is a constant topic, its influence and deep power has been somewhat forgotten; that often it is thrown around with a superficial shell of weight or sadness.

An excerpt describing the impact upon his mother, from an account my father wrote:

How could the nightmare sink in for a child then, when nothing of it has yet sunk in for anyone? When my mother adopted happiness, the sorrow didn’t just fade into nonexistence, as would seem fair. It dug like tiny coils within her until years later, long after I was born, like a time release capsule, the sorrow exploded, scattering delusions like desert sands, revealing chasms better seen than not.

When I was a boy, my mother was young and tall dragging me shopping or sharing her bath, me by her feet enveloped by warm water and pink tiled walls.

Still, there was the hidden aspect that harkened to the past and tautened and strained the workings that burst in the future. There was a nervousness about my mother, a hesitating, jittery sensibility, as though she were standing alone, mirror bright against a stormy landscape, knee-deep in water. From my mother’s corner of the house came a fear and exasperation that encompassed me as imperceptibly as her love and warmth. A bird, suddenly startled, transmits her fear to her young, and, so too, like a river changing course in an underground cavern, unseen, unknown, I was touched by a tremulous hand.”

On the left, Susi; my dad thought this picture of Susi was himself when he first saw it. Below is my dad.

Poor Little Rough Tough Man

Susi (my grandmother) kept extensive journals from a young age, writing in German. My father compares her journals to mine except she wrote about her ideas rather than feelings. As they transitioned to English, it is interesting to see how her language progressed: her essays were covered in a teacher’s correctional red ink, though underneath this ink (intended to point out grammatical errors), her own words were lyrical and expressive. A year later, in her wartime narrative of the political situation, her language is almost text-bookish.
These are some later journal entries about my father, kept together with entries by Susi’s mother in a large, thick, gold-edged book…

‘Whoever displeases Andy is a “bad boy.”–e.g. If I am not standing at attention with a piece of toilet paper the minute he is finished I get balled out: “Come here, badboy!” After getting his booster shot Andy went crying into the waiting room and walked up to each waiting patient saying: “Doctor is a bad bad boy!”’ My dad comments that this is where I inherited my demanding side from—before, he had thought it was from my “Tartar” mom. I’ll go into more detail about this later….

He often talks of his “Cowboys and Indians” days….
‘Even at the age of three Andy loved his bottle. Cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes, booted legs crossed, he lies on the sofa and sucks on his bottle and glares at anybody who dares to smile. One night at 3 am, he woke me, hands me the empty bottle with these words: “I’m a big boy now. I throw away my bottle.” And sure enough he never asked for it since.’

My father remembers this event in remarkable clarity. In his memory it was five or so in the morning when he marched to his parents room and made the announcement. By the time they had fully awakened he had already slammed the door, headed downstairs to throw away his bottle. He remembers opening the door, the air still and dewy.

Sept 52 . . . ‘For some time now Andy has been calling himself “poor little Andy. But today at dinner he changed his tone: “More avocado!” he orders, “for a rough man!” I say: “Well Andy which are you going to be? Poor little Andy or a rough man?” “Both!” he says. “I am poor little Andy at school and a rough tough man at home!” And right he is too!’
My dad, in answering a few of my questions about Susi, referred to himself “as a rough, tough man, naturally”. This entry by Susi is a nice summary for me: I’d grown familiar with stories of my dad hating school and feeling pressed under, and also stories of fights and defiance. I hadn’t known he spelled it out for himself at such a young age, so clearly—and his mother was there for observation and agreement.

Like father like daughter…like brother?

Usually people say when you spend a lot of time with one person they sort of grow on you. You start to act the same, talk the same, look the same…finish eachothers sentences…

Daddy holding me as wee one.

Well even though I only spend every other week with my dad, everywhere I go something reminds me of him. Whenever we are in the same room, we’re making the same cheesy joke we’ve told a thousand times, laughing with, and finishing each others sentences. Either that or we’re both craving the same bean and cheese vegetarian burritos from Hi-Tec.

Daddy and me dancing at my Bat Mitzva.

We thrive off each others energies like a couple of batteries! It’s a bond that I can’t describe yet…sometimes it feels like there’s something missing…

While making my half-remembered project about my dad’s brother Andy…I am determined to find the hidden treasures of his pat life that lie within my dad and I.

Reconstructions

by Zoe Pollak

Last week I had a conversation with my mother about perspective and how it changes with the age and the development of empathy. I included a short transcript. After the transcript both my mother and I wrote a sentence summarizing our conversation, partly using words from the transcript and adding our own as well. (My voice is in italics.)

 When did you realize that your parents had separate lives from your own? Was your epiphany in any way similar to mine?

It was really late. I don’t think I really got it until my mom called and I was 25 and she said she was getting a divorce from my dad. And then I realized that she wasn’t just my mom and he wasn’t just my dad and that they have other identities that they weren’t particularly happy with at the moment. My mom was really upset, and I realized that their identity as parents was only one identity of their lives and was not as crucial as their other identities at that point.

How did that change the way you interacted with your parents?

I’m not sure how much it changed my interactions, but it informed them.

Now that I’ve become disillusioned, I feel more distanced from my memories as a child. I look at photographs that I had positive associations with, and now I can see sadness and stress and  emotional strain on people’s countenances that I couldn’t detect ten or fifteen years ago.  Did your realization make you see your earlier life/relationships differently?

Well, my disillusionment did make me view their marriage in a different way, and I felt more understanding and aware of their difficulties and frailties than I was earlier.

 

My sentence: I realized that identities I couldn’t detect ten or fifteen years ago are as crucial to my mom and dad as their lives as parents.  

 

My mother’s sentence: When my parents’ marriage fell apart, I began to understand that they saw themselves as more than simply mother and father.

Faking Jewish

Mom & me at camp

My mom’s life aspiration is to become rich, or rather, for me to become rich. Ever since I’ve been old enough to read she’s been hankering for me to pick up one of her many investment books, particularly Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys instead. Somewhere along the way she decided that I might learn some money-management skills if I hung out with Jews. Maybe their stereotypical wealth would rub off on me.

So she took me over to her Jewish friends’ houses and had me become friends with their children. She got a family membership for the Jewish Community Center and she enrolled us in the annual Jewish Single Mothers Hanukah Camp. There was only one problem: neither of us were Jewish.

“Hey, my name is Camille, what’s yours?”

“Ashley.”

“What is your mom going to get you for Hanukah?”

“Nothing. I’m Christian.”

“Huh.”

When the Hanukah buffet was served my mom asked for pork. When it was time to recite part of the Old Testament in Hebrew we had no idea what to do. Basically, my mom’s cover was blown. As if the fact that we were the only Chinese in the camp was not enough. They didn’t kick us out, but we never went to the Jewish Single Mothers Hanukah camp again. That was too bad, because I thought being Jewish was more fun than being Christian.

“Daddy George, can I become Jewish?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“NO!”

“But it is the same thing as being Christian except they don’t believe Jesus was the son of God.”

“You believe in Jesus. You believe he is the son of God.”

“Maybe he’s not.”

“He is.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t argue with me.”

Quick Video for your Viewing Pleasure

Click please :]

A Conflict for the Ages

Solomon Lowenstein, my great-great grandfather, was locked in a tumultuous debate with himself.  Half of him argued that God does exist, while the other half insisted the contrary.  This battle greatly affected all of his descendants, including me.  Today, my family is hardly actively jewish at all, which shows rather clearly which part of him won that battle.

The following poem is my attempt to get inside of my great great grandfathers head, to try and

Reflections

By Jason Zavaleta

Everywhere, everyday, refections appear in mirrors, water, windows, and so on. It seems though, that these images of ourselves looking back at us from these numerous surfaces, doesn’t seem to have a meaning. So often do people just glance to see if their hair is fixed right or if their tie needs adjusting, and looking at everything in the reflection but what’s important. Themselves.

Reflections provide you with a chance to stop for a moment, and question yourself. Is this who I want to be? Do I like who I am? Could I be better? All these questions come up when I see my reflection. Looking at yourself and evaluating that image in that reflection is probably one of the hardest things to do.

Insult of meaning?

Shmuck- this insulting term has become  an everyday American curse. However there is something fundamentally wrong in the transformation. Schmuck literally translates to a detestable pseudonym for male genitalia. Think for a second, when is the last time you ever wanted to call somebody a penis? Given the circumstances however; American English is devoid of meaningful insults. Avoiding ‘F!@#’ in a typical uncivil argument is comparable avoiding corn in Iowa. ‘Schmuck’ and other witty insults are in high demand.

Scouring

From what I perceive, people victimized by war or traumatic upbringing speak very little of their past. It seems to me—perhaps I’m wrong—that we fill in those missing spots mostly, say, after a grandparent’s death: Scouring and piecing-together signs, we can faintly merge feelings that, in reflection, feed or skew our understanding. In general we are guided by feelings, not by reason. In asking my father a few questions, it was interesting to see how his descriptions of his mother are not concrete, yet are memories of great impact.

Getting to know Poppy

My grandfather has never been the talker of his family. Normally I would ask him a quick question about his day and then his wife, my adorable grandma, whom I affectionately call Grammy, would interject with a comment about such-and-such family member or what she was making for dinner or something akin to that. However, hauling my small little family party to San Francisco for a quick trip to a small exhibit entitled “Jews of the Fillmore” gave a glimpse into my grandfather’s interesting upbringing. Or as my mom so eloquently put it, “taking a trip down memory lane.”

The Man In The Mirror

Who is he?

Who is this man

with my eyes

and my teeth

and my cheeks?

With my sparse hair

like tufts of downy clouds

and my eyes blue like deep ice

And what does this man believe.

For isn’t a man what he believes.

A Glance into the Mirror

By Jason Zavaleta

My maternal grandfather and I never really had a relationship. Since I was child, I always knew him as the soft spoken, and quiet member of the family who cried…a lot.

The first time he really influenced me was in 2004, when I became a Bar Mitzvah. He gave me this blessing:

Notice. He cried.

incomplete stories

Yesterday morning while walking to Yom Kippur services I spoke with my father about his father’s death. I heard some stands of story about a trip to New York to visit a specialist and my grandfather’s decision not to do chemotherapy. In my father’s trademark bittersweet tone- one that brings both a smile to my mouth and that  heaviness so familiar to my heart-  my father suggested that his father, always a business man, weighed the options of a couple more months of life versus all the thousands of dollars he would have to spend and just chose not to. Another idea is that perhaps there was some guilt at being one of the few of his Russian family members who did get the chance to come to America, who got to build a life, and survived through it all. And so my grandfather, at the approximate age of 45, decided it was his time to die. And now (perhaps inspired by the spirit of Yom Kippur) I know more about his death, but I wish to know about his life.

Here is a half remembered story about my paternal grandfather, told in the only style I’ve ever known it, incomplete and wandering- with familial dissention that interrupts the narrative and of course with plenty of bias.

Samuel Lesser went to University in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was in the Russian army and was put in the front, because the Jews always went straight to the front. But he spoke seven languages and so he could tutor the son of the captain. Because of this he was kept from fighting for some time. There was a war going on. At some point he injured himself and while on the train (being transported to a hospital?) he deserted the army. He went to his brother’s house, he asked him for help. It was very dangerous to be harboring a deserter of the Russian army. Sam’s brother got him the passport of a dead goy. His brother was a tea seller, he gave him money for boat fare to China on the condition that he send tea back to Russia. Upon getting to China Sam got the tea and was able send it the day before trade was closed. Sam got a job on a ship bound for Angel Island and worked his way across the ocean. When he arrived in San Francisco he spoke seven languages but not one of them was English. That first week he slept in the movie theaters and learned English from the movies and cartoons that played. He got a job working in a factory,  stamping grade A USDA approved on packages of beef. Apparently he wasn’t so good at this, not quite fast enough. (I imagine this a little like that episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ in the chocolate factory with the conveyor belt, but less humorous). Sam’s foreman went to speak with him and Sam told him he had some kinsfolk in the mid-west who were in the grocery

Distanced and Connected

by Zoe Pollak

The next two blogs I write will be paraphrasing a conversation between my mother and myself. In this first part, I interviewed my mother and told her about the collaboration aspect of the project. (The following entries are summarized.) Next week, I will continue our conversation and delve deeper into the more cerebral rather than solely logistical aspects of the project.

Verbal Interview Part 1

Zoë: After reading your piece, “Double Vision,” I decided that I want to focus on our relationship’s changing dynamic in order to learn more about my own growing independence. I want to talk to you about your life before I was born, and the aspects I was either sheltered from or simply too young to comprehend. Through looking back in time, I hope to explore my realization of you as a separate person from just “mom.” Are you okay with my proposal?

My mother

Me at 6

Mom: That sounds like an interesting topic, and I’m glad you want to think about this. I’m happy that you’re becoming independent; I think that’s what most parents want for their children. Of course, different cultures vary in views of adolescent maturity: we’re affluent enough to be able to afford the distance that comes with independence. Sure, there are times when I get nostalgic about you being little, but then I realize parts of our relationship now couldn’t have existed when you were entirely dependent on your parents.

Zoë: Definitely, I agree with you. I think this project is not only a way of acknowledging the healthy and grounded distance we’re developing as I get older, but because blogging is a written medium, it will also connect us in the sense that you are a writer and I like to write. Which brings me to

THE MISSING LINK

Time heals everything. With enough of it, time also leaves a wall of cobwebs over the all the memories. This wall of dust is extremely fragile concerning anyone who has lost someone yet I believe you can uncover a lot of treasure from the past, some memories, thoughts, and feelings that one might of that they had lost forever or never even had.

This metaphor is referring to my half remembered project I’m doing on my dad’s brother. I am uncovering not only photographs, stories, and old feelings, but a realization of why my dad became the person who he is now, and how much his persona has grown on me. Starting this project, I have found that Andy is the missing link to me and my dad’s incredible wacky bond. I am using this as an opportunity for me to reconnect with Andy, and along the way I can see my dad is as well. I used this metaphor not only for uncovering old emotions but belongings, photographs, and memorabilia as well.

The beginning of this project I have started has already sparked so many of my friends and family around me. I am constantly getting emails from my cousins and Andy’s old friends and family about what a remarkable human being he was how much he has changed their lives. Along with these sentimental emails and encounters my dad and grandparents and I have spent a bunch of time digging up old photo albums, postcards, and video recording of his travels.

Jerusalem

A close Jewish family friend who grew up with Andy and my dad is an example of one of the many people inspired by Andy who wrote to me about him:

“On the actual day of his death, I received his last letter from Nepal- a vibrant 6 pager full of incredible descriptions.  Like you, he was also a story teller.

Our Photographs Are Dying

by Lee Goldin

It’s a morbid thought, but not an exaggeration.  Every day our most prized photographs are dying a slow death at the hands of dirt, dust, and time. And yet we use photographs to defy time. To capture our youth, hold it in our hands, hang it on walls, and show to others. With photos we speak to the dead. We take comfort knowing that even when we grow old, we will have photographs of our youth. We feel a need to say, “look! That was ME.” And yet, like the portrait of Dorian Grey, our photos will whither away just as we do.

I’ve taken on the duty of preserving our family’s photographs. My latest project has taken me deep into the private collection of my great grandfather, newsman Lee Sanger Ettelson (pictured above as a child and left as great-grandfather). I cherish the treasures I have uncovered, but continue to lament what is either omitted or lost.

Nexus Point

 

by Lee Goldin

My grandmother’s family and my grandfather’s family were both from the same town of Soulwaki Poland Nobody realized this until years later. The Levitch and Beruvich clans. My grandmother speaks of them fondly. She points to an old cousin standing in the back of a family photo on a wall of such photos in a room of such walls. “She must have been standing on something,” she says of her cousin in the photograph,” She was very short.”

 

The walls of photos were dizzingly confusing to me as a child. Who were all these faces watching me grow up? Now that I’m old enough to ask this question, my grandmother answers patiently, knowing it may be the last time anyone ever asks her. She draws an invisible family tree between the photographs, little branches stretching from frame to frame.

My grandmother evades my camera lens as I film the photos on the walls. All I catch are her gentle hands pointing from face to face, name to name.

Namesake

by Lee Goldin

Being a namesake is often a mixed blessing, for sharing a name with an ancestor can be a source of great pride or great embarrassment. In my case, bearing the name of my great grandfather Lee Sanger Ettelson, a renowned right hand of William Randolph Hearst, is a bit of both. On one hand, he is perhaps the most accomplished man in the history of our family. He was among the most powerful newsmen of his day, running Hearst rags in every major city in the country. Over the years he rubbed elbows with movie stars, impresarios, politicos, heads of state, and even royalty. He joined Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Astor on their honeymoon, helped Governor Pat Brown build his political dynasty, and served as the secret note-passer between Hearst and the infamous Marion Davies. His exploits have been catalogued in Time magazine, and books such as The Madhouse on Madison Avenue as well as the controversial biography Citizen Hearst (to which he also served as a significantly cited source).

Lee moderates a political debate on ABC in Chicago

Lee lampooned by his funny paper artists

On the other hand, while my great grandfather was a very powerful man in his own right, he was, in the end just another yes-man for Hearst. As a consummate contrarian and independent contractor extraordinaire, I simply can’t abide sharing a name with anyone who would kiss the ass of a demented demagogue like William Randolph Hearst.

Theory #372

Craning back my neck to a time somehow faded into the distance, I feel I have lost familiarity. It was so recent—my grandmother lived and we could still set down our bags on her cold red-and-white tiled floor, traipsing through the vast wooden house distinctly smelling of musky cedar and books. I have the memory of chocolate-covered coffee beans (always saved for my cousin and me in the TV room in large glass jars requiring effort to open). Her house has since been sold and demolished, and I spurn to visit the bare site of where it stood.
I remember Susi’s feeling, her floating softness and thoughtfully formed words; crooked toes and fingers; her quiet smile through which each of her son’s faces showed. It seems we have lost everything of my grandparents, and so suddenly. What I keep of her is her memory—and a memory not yet explored—through her journals and her kept books from childhood; her inner presence still waits to be released. And much of my perception of her (perhaps subconsciously built up and developed through my father: his manner and makeup and his closeness to her) has brought me closer to Susi, even after her death. I feel now that I did not know my grandmother as a person. I knew her as a protecting and nurturing woman, an ice cream-offering and paper-editing grandmother, who enjoyed the nature of her immense garden and whose body was slowly deteriorating.
One theory of my father’s, out of his million theories, evolves around the deep emotion—incited in the 1930s and ‘40s—that is passed from generation to generation of Jews, brewing in a fear and anger kept below the skin. By beginning with my father and close family, examining from inward to out, I will explore my grandmother to first understand what I am made up of. My uncles and father, the four Martin Boys, compose in such varied ways each aspect of my grandparents.

Impact

By Alex Pollak

(Before I begin, I would suggest you pull up this video. No watching is neccessary, it is meant to be an auditory aspect of this post)

Solomon Lowenstein was locked in a tumultuous debate with himself.  Half of him argued that God does exist, while the other half insisted the contrary.  His religious half dominated in his childhood, causing him to become a Rabbi.  Later in his life, however, the skeptical side of him began to take over.  He  became unsure of his stance on religion, and ended up never leading a congregation.

This battle greatly affected all of his descendants.  Today, my family is barely actively jewish at all, which shows pretty clearly which part of him won that battle.

What I would like to focus on in the future is how the result of his battle traveled down the generations to reach me.  How it affected my grandfather, and then my mother, would be two convenient ways to start, then perhaps I could move on to get my aunt’s statement.

Photo: Solomon Lowenstein on Umbrella Rock