November 17, 2008

It was standing room only as we listened to Erin retell her story about the year she spent living in Poland, getting to know the family that hid her mother as a small child. In the book, The Pages In Between, Erin describes her time hanging out with young Poles who thought Jews were superstars, sported Chai tattoos, and packed huge, outdoor concerts of Jewish Klezmer music.

The book is a 21st century look at the ongoing consequences of the Holocaust these years later and an exploration of the way stories and histories we’ve all inherited may have been distorted by decades of memory and spin.

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Ira Glass is a 30-year veteran of public radio. He has been a reporter and host on several National Public Radio programs, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation. Named Best Radio Host in America by Time magazine in 2001, Glass is creator and host of This American Life, one of the most popular and widely acclaimed radio shows in the U.S.

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We thank the Tenement Museum for co-sponsoring and hosting.

September 23, 2008

Human beings forget, it’s what we do. How do we ensure the Shoah is remembered, and not forgotten? By looking at Jewish text, and through discussion, writing exercises and poetry, we experimented with diverse and individualized ways of remembering.
 
Janet R. Kirchheimer is a poet whose work has appeared in a variety of publications both in the U.S. and abroad. Her moving collection of poems about the Holocaust, “How To Spot One Of Us” (CLAL, Nov. 2007)
has received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Rabbis Harold Kushner and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg (Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), as well as renowned poets Mary Stewart Hammond, Yerra Sugarman, and Jeanne Marie Beaumont.
 
Her work has appeared in journals, including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Kalliope, Lilith, Natural Bridge, PoetryNZ, Main Street Rag, on beliefnet.com and babelfruit.com, in addition to a variety of Jewish publications. In 2007, she was nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize.
 
A Teaching Fellow at CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Janet conducts writing workshops including, “Changing the World with Words,” which teaches adults and teens about Judaism using
creative writing exercises and poetry. She also leads a “Poetry Shmooze” where participants read and discuss Jewish-themed poems.

Thanks to the Fifth Avenue Synagogue for hosting us.