JGSMI-Michigan Program 2/3/13

[David Goldis]

David Goldis

VP Publicity JGSMI

d.go...@gmail.com

http://davidgoldis.wordpress.com/

We Are Here: A Lithuanian Encounter

Sunday, February 3, 2013, at 11 AM at the Holocaust Memorial Center

Ellen Cassedy set off into the Jewish heartland of Lithuania to study Yiddish and connect with her Jewish forebears. But on the brink of her trip, her uncle revealed something she’d never suspected, and what had begun as a personal quest expanded into a larger exploration. Probing the terrain of memory and moral dilemmas, Ms. Cassedy shares the fascinating story of how a genealogical journey to the Old World changed her view of the past, changed her view of the future, and changed her. She takes us to the archives and kitchen tables where her family history revealed its confounding secrets, to the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, to complex commemorative sites, and to encounters with the leaders of Jewish education efforts in Lithuania today, giving us an close-up view of how a post-Holocaust nation explores its own “Jewish family history.” Jewish Book World calls her book “brilliantly balanced, totally engaging, and constantly penetrating.”

Ellen Cassedy, the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (Univ. of Nebraska Press), has explored both her own family history and Lithuania’s complex 20th Century history for ten years. She is a former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News whose articles, essays, and translations have appeared in Hadassah, The Jewish Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and other publications. She has just been awarded the 2012 Translation Prize by the National Yiddish Book Center, with her colleague Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. Ms. Cassedy delivered the luncheon lecture to the Litvak SIG at the IAJGS conference in Washington, D.C., and has spoken or will speak to Jewish Genealogy Societies in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Diego, Portland, and Cleveland, and to congregations, universities, and Jewish and Lithuanian community gatherings throughout the country. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

Refreshments will be served.

Members Free

Guests $5.00