Thanks to Substack I found my way to your door, Steven.
I have never met you in the flesh, and yet it is precisely my flesh
that has been moved by your recent posts.
Jewish families like mine, with grandparents who all fled Eastern Europe
more than 100 years ago, closed the door to "the war that concerned no one we knew."
I hate that quote, but it found its way into a poem I wrote decades ago to describe
guilt complex that pervaded the lives of many American-born Jews who lost touch with "the old world."
The denial of connection to our past haunted me as a child born in 1948, pervading my dreams
and shaping the adult I was to become. My obsession with finding my own place in history lead me on a search for the truth that was "hiding in plain sight." I first read John Hersey's The Wall, to understand the concept of the Warsaw Ghetto. I joined a Jewish Youth Group that was co-founded by surviving members of The Uprising. And I wrote of my disconnectedness and how dangerous it is to close your eyes and ears to the unpleasantness of human error.
After my children left for college and lives of their own, I began to study history in earnest. I studied Yiddish language and literature long-lost to my all-American, fully-integrated family. And after the election of 2016, I became reacquainted with the work of Timothy Synder and more recently Heather Cox Richardson and Lucian Truscott IV.
Ask me what I learned and I will tell you it's all in my poetry, short stories, essays. You see, I transcribed facts into verse, pain into longing, hatred into passionate concern. And your work, Steven is now a resource for me to explore. What will I discover? Potatoes or diamond, bauxite or dirt. And I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty! Grandpa said "Everything washes off in water." He had no idea that this too is a precious commodity, and one whose distribution that has the power to alter life as we know it,
Thanks to Substack I found my way to your door, Steven.
I have never met you in the flesh, and yet it is precisely my flesh
that has been moved by your recent posts.
Jewish families like mine, with grandparents who all fled Eastern Europe
more than 100 years ago, closed the door to "the war that concerned no one we knew."
I hate that quote, but it found its way into a poem I wrote decades ago to describe
guilt complex that pervaded the lives of many American-born Jews who lost touch with "the old world."
The denial of connection to our past haunted me as a child born in 1948, pervading my dreams
and shaping the adult I was to become. My obsession with finding my own place in history lead me on a search for the truth that was "hiding in plain sight." I first read John Hersey's The Wall, to understand the concept of the Warsaw Ghetto. I joined a Jewish Youth Group that was co-founded by surviving members of The Uprising. And I wrote of my disconnectedness and how dangerous it is to close your eyes and ears to the unpleasantness of human error.
After my children left for college and lives of their own, I began to study history in earnest. I studied Yiddish language and literature long-lost to my all-American, fully-integrated family. And after the election of 2016, I became reacquainted with the work of Timothy Synder and more recently Heather Cox Richardson and Lucian Truscott IV.
Ask me what I learned and I will tell you it's all in my poetry, short stories, essays. You see, I transcribed facts into verse, pain into longing, hatred into passionate concern. And your work, Steven is now a resource for me to explore. What will I discover? Potatoes or diamond, bauxite or dirt. And I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty! Grandpa said "Everything washes off in water." He had no idea that this too is a precious commodity, and one whose distribution that has the power to alter life as we know it,