Jay, such a beautiful story. I am reading it now on Judith. I didn't know this publication, but I am eager to dive in.. I am also writing a creative nonfiction account of an exodus from Russia Ukraine, the Old Country--this, my grandmother Sophie's story, from an earlier time of terror, pre-Revolution, in 1893. The memoir is a mix of prose, poetry and the science of trauma.
I never heard her speak in life, and there is little documentation of her journey.
You are adding immeasurably to my appreciation for such journeys here. And I am in awe of your Yiddish mastery. Did you grow up knowing these words and phrases? How did you conduct your research?
Robin, thank you. I’m fascinated to learn of your work in progress, as I am of @Howard Lovy’s. I think they’re so important. Farther back in time even than Holocaust accounts, whose survivors are quickly dwindling, we already have all the first-generation accounts we’re going to get of that particular immigrant experience, as far back as your grandmother, which is very near the beginning of that 40-year wave. But there are second generation accounts, with new information and understanding to be recorded before it all begins to fade from living memory.
I wish I could have conducted research in a truly sustained way at some point, but it's been sporadic over the years since just a bit before my father's death in 2005, when I knew would be traveling to Orynin. I did research then, in the New York Public LIbrary's Dorit Jewish Collection, where I found the first independent, recorded confirmation of the existence of a town named Orynin and of a World War I battle that took place there. Now that information is readily available online.
As for the Yiddish, I grew up absorbing words and phrases as most children of Jewish immigrants did, but I could never remotely speak or otherwise understand it. My 11-years-older sister can to a limited degree. Most of the Yiddish here, like many of the details of Orynin life then, I drew from a remarkable discovery only last year -- a self-published memoir by a Rhode Island doctor, a decade older than my father, who didn't leave Orynin until he was 20. It was a very rich fund of information to draw on in order to imaginatively recreate that world and time.
That's amazing that you got to visit. I have never been my grandparents' shtetl, and heard next to nothing about it from my mother growing up. She never heard stories about the Old Country either. They really wanted to forget.
It's even up in the air about which shtetl they came from--there are two in different parts of the Pale of Settlement that have similar-sounding names, at least to my American ears.
I'm sharing pieces of Sophie's "recovered story" on my Substack, Releasing Memory, and reserving more for a book and perhaps eventually a poetry performance piece.
The next iteration I am beginning to research concerns present-day Ukrainians, fighting yet another war. Sad that we humans never seem to learn that wars don't settle anything and only seem to cause more wars
Robin, yes, it was the experience of a lifetime to visit my father's shtetl. I recount my efforts to get there and finally doing so in an earlier chapter of Reason for Being in the World. I know all this kind of ancestral recall is very much in your realm of interest. I've taken a quick look to locate your writing on Sophie and Ukraine and will set aside time to read. I'm looking forward.
I found out about, and subscribed to your Substack, thanks to Judith magazine. Looking forward to reading the whole memoir when it's published.
Thanks for subscribing, Rosa. Hail, Vitruvian! :) Good to know of a reader for the book.
Jay, such a beautiful story. I am reading it now on Judith. I didn't know this publication, but I am eager to dive in.. I am also writing a creative nonfiction account of an exodus from Russia Ukraine, the Old Country--this, my grandmother Sophie's story, from an earlier time of terror, pre-Revolution, in 1893. The memoir is a mix of prose, poetry and the science of trauma.
I never heard her speak in life, and there is little documentation of her journey.
You are adding immeasurably to my appreciation for such journeys here. And I am in awe of your Yiddish mastery. Did you grow up knowing these words and phrases? How did you conduct your research?
Robin, thank you. I’m fascinated to learn of your work in progress, as I am of @Howard Lovy’s. I think they’re so important. Farther back in time even than Holocaust accounts, whose survivors are quickly dwindling, we already have all the first-generation accounts we’re going to get of that particular immigrant experience, as far back as your grandmother, which is very near the beginning of that 40-year wave. But there are second generation accounts, with new information and understanding to be recorded before it all begins to fade from living memory.
I wish I could have conducted research in a truly sustained way at some point, but it's been sporadic over the years since just a bit before my father's death in 2005, when I knew would be traveling to Orynin. I did research then, in the New York Public LIbrary's Dorit Jewish Collection, where I found the first independent, recorded confirmation of the existence of a town named Orynin and of a World War I battle that took place there. Now that information is readily available online.
As for the Yiddish, I grew up absorbing words and phrases as most children of Jewish immigrants did, but I could never remotely speak or otherwise understand it. My 11-years-older sister can to a limited degree. Most of the Yiddish here, like many of the details of Orynin life then, I drew from a remarkable discovery only last year -- a self-published memoir by a Rhode Island doctor, a decade older than my father, who didn't leave Orynin until he was 20. It was a very rich fund of information to draw on in order to imaginatively recreate that world and time.
That's amazing that you got to visit. I have never been my grandparents' shtetl, and heard next to nothing about it from my mother growing up. She never heard stories about the Old Country either. They really wanted to forget.
It's even up in the air about which shtetl they came from--there are two in different parts of the Pale of Settlement that have similar-sounding names, at least to my American ears.
I'm sharing pieces of Sophie's "recovered story" on my Substack, Releasing Memory, and reserving more for a book and perhaps eventually a poetry performance piece.
The next iteration I am beginning to research concerns present-day Ukrainians, fighting yet another war. Sad that we humans never seem to learn that wars don't settle anything and only seem to cause more wars
Robin, yes, it was the experience of a lifetime to visit my father's shtetl. I recount my efforts to get there and finally doing so in an earlier chapter of Reason for Being in the World. I know all this kind of ancestral recall is very much in your realm of interest. I've taken a quick look to locate your writing on Sophie and Ukraine and will set aside time to read. I'm looking forward.
And I will do the same, Jay. It is a sacred honor.