Rocks

It is a Jewish tradition to leave a rock on a gravestone.  Though there are many explanations of this tradition, my favorite is that the permanence of the stone is like the permanence of the memory of the person who has passed.  It could almost be thought of as our promise to keep the memory of this person alive.  Thus said, I have begun a rock project.

This summer, I will participate in the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program (http://hajrtp.org/program.html), an intensive (extremely intensive!) trip to Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland.   In anticipation of the trip, I wanted to find a way to connect my students, colleagues, and friends with my experience.  ROCKS -- Rocks that I will take with me and leave behind at various memorials as reminders that my students, colleagues, and friends have not forgotten the Holocaust, that they, too, will keep alive the memories and spirits of those who perished.

Though my first thought was of my students, I actually began my project with two other groups.  For 10 weeks, I took a class (part of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School) called “The Holocaust as Reflected in Diaries and Memoirs.”  I mentioned my project to my classmates a few weeks ago, and I brought pebbles from my yard to class.  Most seemed honored to create a rock memory.  Some asked for their rocks to be left at a certain site, others didn’t care where I left the rocks.

Last month, I accompanied a group of 25 teens from the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester to the USHMM.  It was a whirlwind day, catching a 6:20 am flight from Rochester and returning the same evening on a 10:25 pm flight.  The trip is aptly named Zikaron (Remembrance).  Sitting at the airport waiting for our flight back home, I went from one group of teens to another explaining my project and asking if they wanted to make a rock.  They did. 

Last week, just after Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), I asked my students to create rocks.  A few asked for their rocks to be left at Bergen-Belsen and wrote Anne Frank’s initials on their rocks.

My labeled zip baggies are filling, but the rocks will not weigh me (or my suitcase) down.

Yom HaShoah

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) seems like an appropriate time to start a blog about being a teacher of the Holocaust.  I have been teaching the Holocaust to 7th graders at Temple Sinai in Rochester, NY since 1997.  It was rather a fluke how I started.   Due to health reasons, the 7th grade teacher had to leave halfway through the year.  I had already been a regular sub at the synagogue, so I took over the class.

My Holocaust education was rather slim.  As a teen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was exposed to the shock and horror of the Holocaust through films like Night and Fog -- a film I would NEVER show to my own students.  Over the years, I had read many memoirs and seen films, and I had been to Yad V'Shem in Jerusalem several times (another story, but I lived in Israel for almost five years).  I still felt that I was merely one step ahead of my students.  After that first year, I was asked if I wanted to rewrite the curriculum for the Holocaust unit (half the year).  Indeed I did!  Now, I felt like I was three steps ahead of the class.  Since, then, I've continued to read, study, and revamp my curriculum.  



Though I didn't choose to teach Holocaust, I feel as though I have been chosen to make sure that the victims' stories are remembered and passed down to the next generation(s).  I do not take this obligation lightly.  It is, in fact, an honor and a privilege.

Your memories are mine... I will pass them on....

---

Echoes -- Voices of the Past

You call, I listen

You ask, I say yes.

I could not be your life preserver,

But I can be your memory preserver.

I will tell your story.