The Kaleidoscope project revives an initiative that was interrupted by the Holocaust: an autobiographical writing competition for Jewish youth from all over Europe
Published in "Haaretz": https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2024-07-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/jewish-youth-from-around-europe-write-about-their-lives-now-and-85-years-ago/00000190-a26f-da1a-adf0-a6ff4cb40000
"My father spoke with me as a friend. He touched offhandedly on the question of whether I was in love with a boy. The question has opened a new page for me … I've always tried to banish the subject from my heart," wrote a 17-year-old Jewish girl calling herself Hansi in Vilna in 1934. Later, she wrote that the boys in her class ignored her, that she saw herself as "unattractive to the eye" and that the indifference of the boys made her sit on the sidelines and sink into thought while the other girls sat together and shared anecdotes.
"That specific situation made it so I didn't love a single boy," she wrote. "At a time when I couldn't stop my feelings, I felt love for boys in general, as the opposite sex, as a group and not as individuals."
Hansi's text is only one testament out of hundreds that unfurl over thousands of pages written by young Jews who lived in Poland and several of its neighbors in the 1930s. They were collected by the Yiddish Scientific Institute, which worked in Eastern Europe in the lead-up to World War II with the mission of researching and preserving the region's Jewish life and Yiddish culture.
The organization was established in 1925 in Vilna (then in Poland, now the capital of Lithuania and known as Vilnius) and had branches in Warsaw, Berlin and New York. World War II forced the organization to move its operations to New York, which is the home to its modern incarnation's headquarters to this day.
The collection of these autobiographical accounts is fascinating in the personal glimpse it gives into prewar Jewish life. Many of the teenagers who wrote them died in the Holocaust, their words now serving as a memorial to the complex, diverse lives that were lost. They wrote about music, literature, ice skating and a myriad of other subjects. Some were politically aware and were Zionists, socialists or members of the Bund movement. There were the religious and the secular, the poor and the rich, the city folk and the rural folk. There were young people in love, the newly married and the divorced. Some dreamed of emigrating to the New World; some were excited about the future, and others were afraid of it.
"In the 1930s, the YIVO institute in Vilna wanted to know what was going on in the minds of young people in Yiddish-speaking countries," says Daniela Greiber, the Jewish Communal Life grants program manager at Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe. "They organized a competition for autobiographical writing, and over the course of several rounds, between 1934 and 1939, they received 627 manuscripts. Most were handwritten and dozens of pages long. Most of the writers were boys, but there were girls too, and although the prevalent language was Yiddish, there were also some – including Hansi – who wrote in both Hebrew and Polish.
"The idea wasn't to publish the manuscripts, but to preserve them so they would serve as raw material for social research," continues Greiber. "The background for the project was the "Yiddishist" worldview, which believed in the need to develop a sense of belonging and meaning in Jewish life in countries where Yiddish was spoken.
There was also a belief among many that there was a future for Jews in Europe that would involve a socialist revolution. This was a time when people studied ethnography and were involved in the discipline of autobiographical writing. Someone had the ingenious idea of asking young people to write their biographies, and to make the manuscripts truthful, it was proposed to do it with anonymity."
The request was publicized in the press; to increase motivation, a competition with prizes was announced. Each year, several writers won 150 zlotys each. However, the winners in the final round never found out about their accomplishment. The date set for announcing the winner was September 1, 1939, the very day World War II broke out. It's likely that many of the participants didn't survive the following years.
The Jewish autobiographical competition was abruptly forced to end because of the war, but 85 years later, the Rothschild Foundation has begun to revive the project. It named the new project Kaleidoscope, and it seems almost like the twin of the original one. Once more, young Jews from all over Europe are writing about their lives. This time, the works aren't only being preserved and collected, but are also being published (in their original language and the English translation) on the project's website.
Dennis Grossman, one of the first participants in the project, is a young Jewish man from Budapest who grew up participating in Hungarian Jewish schools and summer camps. "I'm 21 years old and I still go to summer camps – now as a counselor," he wrote. "It is very hard to stay involved in the Jewish community after somebody reaches adulthood. Before that, you can go to camps, Jewish school and youth movements. But you grow out of these when you become 18 years old.
"That is why – if you want to stay involved – people usually go work at [camps] as a counselor or get jobs in Jewish organizations," he continued. "My girlfriend and I started hosting Shabbat dinners for our Jewish friends every other Friday as a way to keep our little community together. We usually say blessings for the wine and challah, sometimes we say kiddush. After that we eat, drink, have conversations and play board games.
"Most of the people who come are our friends from […] camp, but we also try to invite anybody who has somewhat of a connection to Judaism and is looking for a way into the community," he added. "There are lots of young Jews in Hungary who either find out about their being Jewish too late or have some other reason for not getting involved in the community early on. These people get locked out because most of the programs and communities for young adults are just like our Shabbat dinners. Small, because my home can only fit so many, and somewhat closed because we only know the people in our social bubble.
"I am truly frustrated by this dynamic and I'm always looking for ways to get more people involved," he wrote. "My philosophy is that people should relate to their Jewish identities through experiences they have. These experiences can be anywhere from going to the synagogue to attending a Shabbat dinner or a bar mitzvah. These can overwrite the fact that a lot of people relate to Judaism through the Holocaust or through our history."
Dennis is the son of an American father and a Hungarian mother who divorced when he was a baby. Most of his mother's family died in Auschwitz, and those who survived avoided their Jewish identity after the war. His mother started to show renewed interest in her 20s. "My mother always put more emphasis on making these experiences fun and digestible for us rather than following the strict rules," he wrote. "Because of this, for example, my concept of Shabbat is about having everyone around the table and my mom kissing my head, blessing me, and having peace around us. It is very far from the concept that we aren't allowed to do certain things…"
Dennis understands the significance of the manuscripts that were written so many decades ago and of the renewal of the project. "It's trying to understand the period we live in and the significance of being a Hungarian Jew in this time period," he says. "In my text, I tried to explain the situation so that people understand it. But besides the historical aspect, I also like to express myself in writing, and it feels good to be a part of something like this and to share my Jewish identity with the world. "
In addition to the positive aspects of Jewish identity, are there also more challenging aspects?
"For me, it's not a big challenge to be Jewish. If I wasn't an active Jew, that would be a greater concession. There's a fear of antisemitism, of estrangement, of discrimination, of the fact that people don't understand us or think we're strange, but if we don't expose ourselves and aren't active, people will understand us even less. I believe in being a full part of society in general, and I feel that through me, people will understand what Judaism is.
Continues:
דיויד סטברו 