L’dor Vador: Oral Histories of Resilience
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L’dor Vador: Oral Histories of Resilience

Overview

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


Our Partners


Repair the World mobilizes Jews and their communities to take action to pursue a just world, igniting a lifelong commitment to service. We believe service in support of social change is vital to a flourishing Jewish community and an inspired Jewish life. By 2030, Repair will inspire and catalyze one million acts of service towards repairing the world.

 


The AgeWell Atlanta Neighborhood program (formerly the NORC) is designed to help older adults in their homes be more engaged with one another and with their community. The programs and services provide older adults with access to home safety improvements and enrichment opportunities that provide a sense of empowerment and remove barriers to participation such as transportation, affordability, and lack of knowledge. AgeWell Atlanta Neighborhoods provide cost-effective services through collaborations with community partners to address unmet needs of the residents.

 


 

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Accessing Our Collections

Within our archival holdings you can find thousands of manuscript and photograph collections, and hundreds of artifacts, textiles, and hundreds of oral histories. To access our catalog, which contains our artifacts, textiles, photographs, and vertical files, please follow the "Access Our Catalog" button below. To access our finding aids, which act as guides to our manuscript collections, please follow the "Finding Aids" button below. To access our oral histories, please follow the "Oral Histories" button below.


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Finding Aids

Oral Histories

Having trouble navigating our collections on the web or what you are looking for is not available online? Please Ask our Archivist and one of our staff members will be in touch with you shortly to answer your questions, complete your research requests, or schedule an appointment.

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Sponsors

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Marilyn Ginsberg Eckstein, Presenting Sponsor, in memory of her father Paul Ginsberg z’l (1907-1974). 

Additional support provided by an Anonymous donor.

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This website is supported by a generous gift from the Jerry and Dulcy Rosenberg Family in honor of Elinor Rosenberg Breman.

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