Letters from Here to Afar

Fifth graders and their families from our Edot, Shira and Y'tzira tracks gathered outside the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco this past Sunday morning, as we waited for our two assigned docents to greet us at the main entrance. At 9:55, Elizheva and Joan came out, introduced themselves, and gave each of us a round tag to stick onto our jackets/shirts, next to our name tags, proclaiming that we were part of a private tour.

Once inside the Museum, there was so much to look at that heads were constantly moving up and down and to both sides, as we were introduced to the history and architecture of the building. We were then led to a large classroom, and once everyone was seated, Elizheva described the art project that would, once we had completed it, help us better understand the two exhibits we would be viewing immediately after.

Students and parents immediately began to rummage through the transparencies on each table, deciding which looked interesting and how they might cut and paste them into a collage. There were old maps which we could cut up and use for our "postcard collage," as well as markers with which to color and add in drawings. Once the collage was completed, we were asked to turn over the "postcard" and write a note to the people in the pictures, using prompt questions to help formulate the note. (There were copies of these prompts on each table.)

For the next half hour or so, you could hear children sharing ideas with parents and vice versa, calls for the glue sticks and certain colored markers - music to a teacher's ears! Elizheva and Joan kept the transparencies coming, as they were being used up at the tables, and I made the rounds from table to table, photographing and filming whatever I could catch with my "old-fashioned" (i.e. not IPhone) digital camera. (I still remember not so long ago having to keep rolls of film in my desk drawer to be sure I always had enough available!)

That's Erin, our Shira teacher, reaching for the transparency

Once all the collages and notes were completed, it was time for volunteers to share what they had written.
Andrew shared his note:

And so did Seth:

And Erin:

Once we had helped to clean up the tables, it was time to divide into two groups for the tours of the two exhibits: "Letters to Afar" and "Poland and Palestine." Erin joined Joan's group while I followed Elizheva's. We were led upstairs to the freight elevator doors onto which a huge map of Europe as it looked in 1938 was hung.

Elizheva shared the history of European Jewry going back a thousand years to help us understand the richness and depth of the Ashkenazi Jewish experience, particularly in the area known as the Pale of Settlement where Jews were forced to live from the end of the 18th century until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

She also used the map to introduce Poland and Palestine: Two Lands and Two Skies. This is an exhibition of approximately fifty images made in the 1930s by photographer Ze’ev (Wilhelm) Aleksandrowicz. The images selected for this exhibition depict everyday life for Jews in Poland and the British Mandate before the Founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Ze'ev traveled frequently between Poland (where he lived) and Palestine; Elizheva showed us on the map the route he had to travel each way - not an easy voyage! Amazingly, it wasn't until 1998 that the negatives of his photographs were discovered by his grandson after he passed away. They were in perfect condition!

After viewing the photos, Elizheva led us into the "Letters to Afar" exhibit. The room, totally darkened to make viewing the old films easier, was divided by temporary walls into what almost could be described as a maze. When you thought you had come to the final film, you turned a corner and there was another one projected onto another temporary wall. The creator of this exhibit, a Hungarian filmmaker named Péter Forgács, collected films taken by Polish Jews who had immigrated to the United States and then returned to visit their hometowns in Poland during the 1920's and 1930's, taking silent movies of family and friends and other residents of the towns and cities they had left behind. He cut and pasted and added music written especially for this exhibit by the Klezmorim band, to convey a message about their lives back then and our lives now. It immediately became very apparent how the art project helped the students immediately connect to what Forgács the artist was doing! When Elizheva asked the students what messages Forgács might be trying to convey, they immediately understood what she was asking. For example, they noticed that some films kept the same image repeating and duplicating itself for a mirror effect - Andrew thought that might be the artist trying to say that our lives today are like the lives they led back then in many ways.

Two hours go very quickly when there is so much to do and see. A very big "THANK YOU" goes to Elizheva and Joan for their warm welcome to the Museum (most of our participants had never visited before Sunday!), and their wonderful guidance through the history and art forms behind the two exhibits. They established a wonderful rapport with both children and adults, and asked wonderful questions which stimulated the students to recall what they had learned in our Edot classroom, as well as to how messages can be conveyed through different art forms, as well as in writing.

And speaking of messages, as I left the Museum, I turned around to take one last look at the Museum, and caught this photo:

Daniel Liebeskind, the architect, designed the cube and the old PG&E red brick substation to form the Hebrew letters "chet" and "yud," which together spell the Hebrew word for "Live" - "CHAI"! It's hard to see from ground level; much easier from overhead. I wonder if the people living in the upper levels of the apartments in the photo can look out their windows each morning and see "CHAI" staring at them - what a wonderful message to start their day!