My father's father was the first of his siblings born in this country. He grew up a member of the generation that was quite happy to leave most Jewish observance behind. For him, and for many of his siblings, Thanksgiving was =the= holiday. Despite growing up in poverty and then beginning his own family during the Depression, he felt that this country was the promised land, and that Thanksgiving exemplified his feeling towards not fearing pogroms in his daily life. It feels very strange, a generation later, to realize that now I am the middle-aged person he was when I first talked with him about his life. But where I recorded with pen and paper, our children now record on their cellphones or video players. I hope their memories remain as clear as mine, but that their mp3s and mpegs survive better than the pages we so carefully stored I no longer no where.
My father's father was the first of his siblings born in this country. He grew up a member of the generation that was quite happy to leave most Jewish observance behind. For him, and for many of his siblings, Thanksgiving was =the= holiday. Despite growing up in poverty and then beginning his own family during the Depression, he felt that this country was the promised land, and that Thanksgiving exemplified his feeling towards not fearing pogroms in his daily life. It feels very strange, a generation later, to realize that now I am the middle-aged person he was when I first talked with him about his life. But where I recorded with pen and paper, our children now record on their cellphones or video players. I hope their memories remain as clear as mine, but that their mp3s and mpegs survive better than the pages we so carefully stored I no longer no where.