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.