October 18, 2007

It was a lovely evening of socializing, with a little learning too. Thanks to the Jewish Enrichment Center for hosting us.

September 9, 2007

For the third straight year, 3GNY had a booth at Jewzapalooza, part of the New York Jewish Music and Heritage Festival. Thanks to all those who came to visit and who signed up for our mailing list. We look forward to seeing you at future events!

August 14, 2007

We attended a performance of fellow member Joan Fishman’s one-woman play, “Walking in His Footsteps”. This very personal, semi-autobiographical play is based on Joan’s childhood experiences with her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, who never spoke of the fate of his family during the war.

After the show, we joined Joan and other group members at a nearby lounge for a post-discussion.

More About the Show: The play was selected to be part of the NYC Fringe Festival that began August 10th. The play’s main content is about Joan’s looking into the past to find clues about her grandfather’s mysterious history: growing up as a Jew in Lithuania, escaping the fate of his family during the Holocaust, meeting her grandmother in a Displaced Persons camp in Munich, and coming to America to start a new life. Yiddish text and song, as well as evocative images projected on a screen are all part of the performance.

NY-based writer Malka Percal recently wrote on her blog “Jewess” about Joan. In the interview, they discussed the play, her other work and 3GNY. Jewess is a blog about Jewish women’s issues.

June 18, 2007

HIAS Young Leaders and 3GNY co-sponsored “Discover Your Roots”.

Valery Bazerov, Director of HIAS Location & Family History, gave us a backgrounder on genealogy research and shared with us anecdotes of his and others’ research – examples of success and frustration. We learned about what questions we need to ask and what tools are available to us. Providing a demo, several participants were chosen to conduct brief searches online for everyone to see. As this was a beginner workshop, we anticipate that the follow-up event will be more hands-on, and that we may need to come with relevant family info. We’re looking forward to the next one.

May 20, 2007

This was our first event to include three generations: Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren. The JCC’s Beit Midrash was filled to capacity as 3GNY’s Daniel Brooks and Leora Klein spoke to the gathering about the group’s beginnings, its mission, accomplishments and future. A PowerPoint presentation helped provide a vivid picture of our community’s first two years.

Following the presentation, a Q&A led to the emotional testaments of several Holocaust survivors expressing their gratitude and pride in the activism of this generation. Their sentiments were returned by the grandchildren, who expressed appreciation at having been inspired by their grandparents’ stories of courage and hope.

April 19, 2007

A group of us met up at Helen’s Restaurant in Chelsea to see a performance unlike anything we’ve seen: Kleynkunst! Warsaw’s brave and brilliant Yiddish Cabaret. As Generation X and Y’ers, we rarely experience Yiddish in forms like cinema, theater or Klezmer, let alone cabaret. The songs, in both Yiddish and English, offered us a glimpse of one of the most unique periods in Jewish history. Spanning the 20s and 30s, Yiddish Cabaret reflected the sophistication, as well as the politics and changing social status of Warsaw’s Jews.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews, imprisoned, starved and faced with death, showed their will to live by clandestinely putting on cabaret shows. This was a form of resistance, alongside the armed resistance that began soon after. In fact, this show was performed in honor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on the same date, 64 years ago. Following the performance, we were able to meet and talk with the performers, Rebecca Joy Fletcher and Stephen Mo Hanan.

For two wonderful reviews of Kleynkunst, please read 3GNY’s Rivka Schiller’s reviews in the Yiddish Forward, from February 16, 2007 and March 2, 2007.

March 16, 2007

We had another successful Shabbat dinner – our third! Our topic at this dinner was how the Holocaust fits into our identity. Makor’s rabbinic intern, Rachel Silverman, asked us to consider the different aspects of our Jewish identity and the influence on our lives — socially, professionally, politically, etc.

The sense of community at these dinners was apparent. Many friends, old and new, stayed around well after the dinner and talked and connected with each other in Makor’s Lounge.

February 25, 2007

We went on a guided tour of The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (MJH). The group was big so we split up. One tour was led by Lori Kass, and the other by Dan Brooks, and as we all walked through the exhibits, everyone shared parts of their family stories. Afterwards, we discussed our impressions of the museum. We talked about the differences of message between MJH and Yad Vashem and the museum in DC. We observed that MJH is geared more toward a younger audience, and maybe leaves one with a message of hope, while the other two are much larger and more similar to each other than to MJH. .

We discussed how we, as a group mostly of non-educators, can make a lasting impact on Holocaust education. Some felt that if we talk about our connection to the Holocaust to younger people, the impression we make may be more enduring. We discussed state-mandated Holocaust education: how it’s taught, its importance and the influence individual teachers can have.

January 25, 2007

It was our first event of 2007, and our first at the JCC in Manhattan. We watched the PBS documentary “American and the Holocaust”. The film addresses America’s reaction to the plight of European Jewry, from Kristallnacht to the end of the war: American anti-Semitism, economic considerations, the politics of the State Department and White House and the conscious effort to cover up the evidence of genocide. The film also tells the stories of those in America, notably the Bergson Group, who worked to open doors for refugees and stop the Holocaust. German-Jewish refugee Kurt Klein is featured throughout the film. Klein managed to emigrate to the US from Nazi Germany in 1937. He unsuccessfully struggles against the U.S. government’s bureaucracy to bring his parents to America.

Afterwards, we discussed whether the film changed the view we had about America’s in the Holocaust as one of liberator. We felt it did, but minimally. Some of us had already known about the U.S. military choosing not to bomb the rail lines to the camps, and we debated what went into that decision. Some of us felt that this shameful episode further highlights how the Jews were, on a whole, left to their own fate. We ended up discussing whether some of these same social, political and bureaucratic problems during World War II have repeated themselves in subsequent genocides, with specific references to the Rwandan genocide in ‘94 and the one going on in Darfur since ‘04.