We started as a 6 week class last spring. About Archives. At our synagogue. But we're still going! Somehow the idea turned into an Art Show. Nobody is sure how that happened. The idea was to use the archival materials that we had and turn it into some art object.
Art? Aaack!
So mine is called "Why no yiddishkeit?" It started with an uncomfortable conversation I had with somebody I knew who assured me that she knew ALL about being Jewish. After awhile, she was substituting the yiddish culture from Eastern Europe, the people, the food, the music, the theater the language for Judaism. But then I thought about my own family. There really was none of that yiddishkeit in my family at all. Why not?
So this piece explores that. On my mother's side (the top half), her relatives were (almost) all from the earlier 1840-1860 migration from the German States. About 250,000 came; they did not come from yiddish (and it's culture) lands. Many from Bavaria ssettled in New Haven, CT. They spoke German and considered themselves German.
My father's side (the bottom half) came from the much larger (about 2 million) later migration (1880-1925) from Eastern Europe. Where the yiddish culture flourished. The Lower East Side, the garment trade, etc. But my father's family settled in Rochester NY. In 1918, my grandfather, won a scholarship to Harvard and was a proud 1920 graduate. From that point on, he was a Harvard Man. He and my grandmother denied their immigrant past of their parents; they obliterated it.
As you know, I have a lot of archival material. And I use it. A lot.
There's the final piece though I'm still picking at it.
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