The Breman Museum and Repair the World are inviting the Jewish community to participate in recording an oral history about how the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is affecting them, their families, and the community.
Atlanta, Georgia. “Our community is currently living through one of those rare times in which we know, every day of the crisis, that this is an historical moment,” states Jeremy Katz, Director of the Ida Pearle and Joseph Cuba Archives for Southern Jewish History at The Breman Museum. “What will happen next and who we will be after this crisis remains to be seen, but what we are experiencing today will be remembered, retold and referred to for generations.”
The Breman along with Repair the World and Agewell, launched what it is calling L’dor Vador: Oral Histories of Resilience to record those experiences. L’dor vador is Hebrew and refers to continuity, to the responsibility of passing on spiritual knowledge and cultural traditions from generation to generation for the purpose of sustaining the customs, heritage, and collective memory of the Jewish people.
The first phase of the program is to recruit young adults, college students 18 years and older as volunteers to implement interviews and to train them how to effectively capture stories related to the pandemic. The second phase is to identify people who represent older generations of Jews in the community to be interviewed.
The first wave of interviewees consists of Volunteer Museum Educators (VME) at The Breman Museum. The VME’s are trained to communicate with school children on docent led tours of the Holocaust exhibition and other exhibitions at the museum. They are from diverse occupations with great communications skills. Some questions they are asked include, how has the pandemic changed your daily life? How did you celebrate Passover this year? What do you think will change because of the pandemic?
The interviews are recorded in person using social distancing best practices and through Zoom meetings or phone calls. After recording the interviews, they will be processed and added to the museum’s archives where they will be made available online for anyone to read.
The Museum currently has in its archives over 1350 oral histories of Jewish men and woman in the Atlanta community that have been recorded and processed for over 25 years.
“The Museum is currently physically closed due to the pandemic however its activities have shifted and its staff is working harder than ever providing relevant and appropriate digital online content,” explains Leslie Gordon, Breman Museum Executive Director, “Collecting these stories has historic importance that must be saved for future generations so they can remember the emotions associated with the fear of the unknown, social distancing, sheltering in place, the economic impact and resilience of the Atlanta, Jewish community. What we record is what future generations will remember. L’dor vador.”
To volunteer to be an interviewer contact Repair the World send an email to lori@loridavila.com