September 1, 2010

Janice Kamenir-Reznik doesn’t tend to get nervous before a speaking engagement, but her Sept. 12 address to worshippers at Mount Sinai Memorial Park and Mortuary’s Kever Avot service has her feeling a bit anxious.

It will be the first time Kamenir-Reznik, 58, will participate in Kever Avot, the ancient Jewish custom of visiting the graves of departed loved ones before Rosh Hashanah and during the 10 Days of Repentance culminating in Yom Kippur. It will also be her first time back at the Simi Valley cemetery where her father, philanthropist and community builder Edward Kamenir, was buried in June following his death at the age of 88.

“I’ve never thought of myself as going to Kever Avot,” said the former attorney and co-founder and president of Jewish World Watch, which aids victims of human rights abuses in Africa. “I’ve never buried anybody before. I don’t know what to expect about how I’ll feel when I get there. It’ll probably be one of my more emotional speaking experiences.”

For many Jews around the world, Kever Avot, literally “graves of our fathers,” inspires remembrance and reflection. Some people ask the souls of the departed to pray for a favorable decree for the living, while others contemplate their relationships with the living and dead and ask for forgiveness.

Kamenir-Reznik sees Kever Avot as an occasion to honor one’s past personally and collectively.

“Kever Avot is a good time to get in touch with what it means to be a Jew and to get in touch with the essential principles that have been passed down from generation to generation,” she said.

Calling each generation a link in the transmission of Jewish learning that began with the patriarchs, she said Kever Avot recalls the role of family members as a conduit of Judaism’s most important messages. When Jews commemorate Kever Avot, they honor the foundations upon which Judaism is based.

One of those foundations, she says, and the subject of her upcoming Kever Avot talk, is the imperative of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, which underlies the work of the organization she co-founded in 2004 with Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis in response to the genocide in Darfur.

“Fighting against indifference is the greatest way to honor our forefathers and foremothers and our personal relatives who are standing in their shoes,” she said. “The social justice component elevates Kever Avot to another level of purpose and mission.”

She learned that lesson from her father, for whom social action was a way of life.

“He always talked about the importance of taking care of the world and if you don’t really believe it, don’t say it,” she said of her father, who taught her that tikkun olam was a global concept that applies to anyone in need. “That’s consistent with the way we were raised.”

Throughout her life, she witnessed his commitment to others firsthand. A dentist, lawyer and general contractor, Kamenir was past president of Sinai Temple and was instrumental in building many Jewish community institutions. He remained equally committed to non-Jewish charities and causes, particularly in the area of public health.

As a child, Kamenir-Reznik saw her father treating low-income patients free of charge in his Westwood dental practice, where she worked during the summers.

“It was a time before dental insurance when people paid after their treatment,” she said. “He’d tell me, ‘This person doesn’t pay.’ He bartered with people who couldn’t afford service. It was very respectful. People who could afford it felt like they were paying something.”

In 1968, Kamenir and his wife, Charlotte, with cooperation from Israel’s Tel HaShomer hospital, established a mobile dental clinic to serve the Bedouin and Palestinian communities in the areas that had come under Israeli control.

“He would take a van out to the territories with just a chair and his bag of dental tools. A call would be sounded, and people would literally come up from the sand dunes,” said Kamenir-Reznik, who accompanied her father to Sharm el-Sheikh during one of his annual, month-long missions. “He would treat people with abscesses that were causing serious problems like deafness and blindness. It was before all these funded projects in the territories came about and there was a lot of anxiety regarding the Palestinians, but my father was not afraid of strangers. It was surely an adventure to them and the right thing to do.”

She evoked his commitment to helping others, even under unsafe conditions, when he worried last year about her then-forthcoming participation in a Jewish World Watch mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where years of war, mass murder and rape have devastated the population.

“He was scared,” she said. “He felt that [going to] the Congo was more dangerous than what he had done. I reminded him what he did going to the newly occupied territories. He realized that it was the same thing. He had put himself out there for a group of strangers who needed care. He knew it was a job that had to be done.”

Upon his daughter’s return, Kamenir became one of the first donors to Jewish World Watch’s Congo mobilization, which includes a burn center and economic development projects to help rehabilitate the local population.

Kamenir-Reznik sees the confluence of Kever Avot and her impending call to social action at the grounds of the cemetery her father helped build as the perfect tribute to his memory.

“He would just love that [Mount Sinai] asked me to do this,” she said. “When I think about my father, I see it as much bigger than [my relationship to him]. It’s the role each of us plays in finishing God’s work of creation. The purpose of Judaism, to me, is conscience to the world. That’s what I got from him.”

Elie Wiesel often recounts the tale of Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, who needed a miracle. His predecessors had gone to a particular spot in the forest, lit a special candle, said a certain blessing and were able to evoke a miracle. Throughout the generations, much had been lost. Now the poor rabbi no longer knew where in the forest one should pray, no longer possessed the special candle, did not even know the secret blessing. What he knew was the story. Dear God, he prayed, the story must be sufficient. And it was.

We are born through stories. The Torah is a tale. Each human life is a selection of anecdotes and incidents that together weave a story. If I ask about you, you cannot possibly tell me everything. Your choices will reflect the story you wish to tell. And the story will enable me to understand who you are.

Why do we tell stories? They make sense of our lives. They carry us on a current of enchantment. They remind us of other possibilities: lives we could have lived, lands unseen, miracles that might yet come to pass. Others, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav said, tell stories to put people to sleep, but I tell my stories to wake people up.

In telling your story you realize for the first time how many twists and bends and possibilities are in each tale. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that God speaks slowly in our lives, a syllable at a time, and only when we reach old age can we read the sentence backward. That is the sentiment of the storyteller. You cannot know the tale in its entirety until the end.

In each generation, there is a hunger for our own stories and for the story that preceded ours. Sometimes the story is simple: the sudden, evocative flash of seeing a child gesture with his thumb and forefinger the way you remember from your grandfather. The story has now looped around and touches its own tail. Memories are part of the child’s story.

When we see that child’s gesture, we realize that the past is recast in light of our own lives. When my grandfather acted and sang in vaudeville, he could not know that his son and grandsons would be rabbis. But somehow it puts his performance in a different light; he is now not only the performer he was in his life, but the forebear of rabbis. What went before is changed by our choices. The tale moves not only forward to the future, but also back into the past.

Judaism is a portable culture. We did not expend our energy on great cathedrals; we might be gone in the next month, or year. Instead we conjured vast story-structures. For thousands of years, we walked up the mountain with Abraham and Isaac, gleaned in the fields with Ruth, saw Hillel stand on one foot, watched the boats leave Spain in exile. These stories were ours. And we added to them with the stories of our own lives.

When a child lies in bed and says “Daddy, tell me a story,” she is beginning the process that will culminate one day in a funeral: “Rabbi, this is the story of my mother’s life.”

Tell your story. In its lines will be the people you remember, incidents that would otherwise be forgotten. The story is the summing up. In the eyes of those who have not heard it, you will see that Rabbi Moshe Leib was right. The story is sufficient; it will work the miracle.

David Wolpe is senior rabbi of Sinai Temple.

Energy poured from the woman with flowing brown hair and a giant smile as she took the stage during the National Storytelling Conference, held this year at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills, July 29-Aug. 1. 

“I’m happy to represent the home team,” Karen Golden shouted to get the crowd warmed up for her performance.

After a short pause, she was in character, having taken on the mannerisms, facial expressions and voice of a first-grader in religious school.

Roars of laughter sprang from the packed room as Golden performed “The Big White Pushka.” Delivered with an endearing, childlike innocence, the tale recounts a pushke box and the comedy that ensues from the misunderstandings of a little Jewish girl. It’s a story best left for Golden to tell, in a way only she can tell it.

As a professional storyteller, Golden is known for bringing the Jewish tunes, tastes and traditions of Eastern Europe to Los Angeles. She entertains the young and old with personal, folk, family, historical and commissioned works, and performs on instruments ranging from the accordion and saxophone to the ocarina and nose flute.

As one of six children, Golden started telling stories at a young age as a way to get some airtime at the dinner table. The stories near and dear to her are the family stories she heard, about her dad emigrating from Lithuania and growing up in an Orthodox home in Milwaukee. Storytelling allows a “great connection not only to my religion, but my heritage, my history, my nationality and my native [Yiddish] language,” Golden said.

Golden, like many Jews for thousands of years before her, is passing on the lessons and history of her people through story.

Ellen Switkes, a local storyteller and one of the emcees at the conference, said that when Jews didn’t have real estate, there were stories.

“I’ve been in a Torah study group for several years, and my rabbi put it best when he said: ‘When the Jews did not have a country, they lived in The Book [Torah]. And The Book is nothing but stories,’ ” Switkes said. 

With many from the L.A. storytelling community attending the conference, the daily events lasted well into the night, because, as one attendant put it, this crew is not easily quieted. 

Workshops on the art of story performance were held throughout the four days. But in the evenings, imaginative characters came to life in story swaps, the sharing of anything from fairy tales to personal stories in an eight-minute format; story slams, higher-impact stories up to five minutes long; and fringe performances, an opportunity for artists to freely create.

Some of the best storytellers in the world, including Golden, performed in front of about 400 people on July 30 at the All Regions Concert. Storytellers from across the United States shared stories of childhood, family, folklore, humor, tragedy and the human spirit.

“With all the varied types of stories and everyone’s unique storytelling styles, each storytelling presentation was a unique experience,” said Michael McCarty, Los Angeles committee chair for the National Storytelling Network.

Denise Valentine, a Mid-Atlantic region representative based in Philadelphia, spoke in smooth, methodic tones while she told the story of how the Earth began. And Wenlock Duane Free, of the Western region, dug into his family’s past to show the humor and uniqueness of growing up in a Western mining town. 

Audience members not only seek to be entertained, they also expect some development within a story. And while each journey must have a beginning and an end, how a storyteller get there is shaped in part by the audience. Factors such as age, religion or cultural background might play a part in what words are deliberately chosen for a performance.

Finding material for stories is another part of the process. Storytellers draw not only from books and folk tales, but also from digging into their own life and pulling out “things that are out of the ordinary,” Golden said.

Golden also looks for life lessons all around her: “When I go through my day, I learn from experiences. People that I meet, uncanny things that happen, observations, how humans interact with one another — this is all material.”

Golden teaches classes that home in on what she calls the seven essentials of a good story. The first step is to open the door by introducing the listener to a person, place or time; it immediately brings the listener into the story. The second step is to incorporate maximum thought into minimum words. “Language should be powerful and should communicate all five senses,” Golden said.

Third, the performer introduces the magic moment when he or she actually becomes a character in the story. Fourth, fifth and sixth include trouble starting to arise, trouble hitting and then this trouble resolving. The seventh and final step is connecting the story to a bigger message.

The art of storytelling crosses continents, and yet the common thread is preservation.

“Many people who tell stories have had religious training because most religions are built on stories,” Switkes said. “You could say that stories —  not a military, not a government, not real estate — kept the Jewish people living and surviving for thousands of years. If the pen is mightier than the sword, perhaps the storyteller has more power than the generals, if you take the long view.”

Phyllis Larrymore Kelly, the storyteller-in-residence at Pierce College’s Farm Center in Woodland Hills, agrees that the key to preserving a people and a culture lies in spoken, not written, stories. For seven years she worked in the Atlanta Museum’s Wren’s Nest, telling “Brer Rabbit and Friends” stories. Although these tales were written down by Joel Chandler Harris, slaves on plantations originally told them.

Professional storytellers know what makes for a strong performance. According to Larrymore Kelly, it’s the energy. “It’s bringing the story to life with characters,” she said.

Also essential to making a story work is making it fun by adapting the poetry and prose and even playing with the rhymes and rhythms. Mike Lockett, a performer from Normal, Ill., was an educator for most of his life before finding his niche in storytelling.

For many interested in getting into the art of storytelling, knowing where to begin can be a daunting process.

“First of all, read a couple hundred stories,” Lockett said. “And if you don’t love it, then it won’t work. A good story is one I can put myself into and the audience relates to.”

The boisterous storyteller personified animals in his story about why bunny rabbits twitch their noses. As he walked onto the stage July 30, wearing a fedora and sport coat, he immediately turned his profile to the audience, brushed back his jacket, stuck out his rotund belly and let out a roar to introduce the character of the lion.

Mary Garrett, from the St. Louis area, said choosing which story to tell is part of the challenge. “You may read 100 stories, but then you’ll find one you want to tell because it somehow resonates with you,” she said.

At the concert, Garrett told a folk tale, which ended with a woman who “saved her people not with a sword, but with a story.”

Before a story is ready for performance, practice is needed — more practice than most people expect. Lockett says a storyteller needs to know his or her characters, and that means practicing at home — in front of mirrors, in front of family — sometimes up to 40 hours before it’s ready. And even then, a story needs to be tweaked — pauses for laughter added or subtracted, pacing adjusted — according to the audience’s response.

L.A. committee chair McCarty keeps his storytelling advice simple: “Practice, practice, practice!”

“There are lots of storytelling groups in the L.A. area where you can try out your stories,” he added. “And, most importantly, have fun.”

When my friend and I couldn’t get a table at Junior’s, we sat at the counter. Of course sitting at the counter means having lunch with the stranger next to you.

The man beside me looked about 75, and I couldn’t help but notice him because he was flirting so loudly with the waitresses.

“Oh Sam, cut it out,” one of them said, laughing as she hurried by.

Then Sam started talking to me. Before my matzah ball soup arrived, he had told me about his childhood in Poland, his parents’ clothing business and about being sent, at 14, to a concentration camp, from which he escaped within 24 hours.

Then Sam went on to give a detailed account of surviving the rest of the war, of his three marriages and of his six grandchildren.

Everyone has a story. But not many people get a chance to tell that story. Not everyone is like Sam, who probably tells his stories regularly and with great enthusiasm at the lunch counter.

Whether someone was born in Poland or Boyle Heights, whether he fought in World War I or survived the Great Depression, whether she is a millionaire or barely making ends meet — everyone has a story to tell.

Unfortunately, the majority of our older relatives take their stories with them when they die. This is a huge loss — especially for their descendants.

One of my friends’ daughters recently lamented this fact: “I wish I knew how my grandparents ended up in Mexico, or how they met. Or what their parents did for a living. We don’t know anything about their lives or their past. It’s really frustrating and sad.”

The truth is, we really do know more about ourselves when we understand our ancestors and our heritage.

But we have so many logical reasons that these stories aren’t heard or preserved.

“We kept meaning to ask Bubbe about her childhood in Europe. But both of us are so pressed for time with work, the kids, soccer games and temple committees that we just never got around to it.”

“I bought my father a very simple tape recorder so he could record his memories and stories. Then we bought him a family history book to fill in. But he wouldn’t do either one, and now his memories are fading.”

Are you fortunate enough to still have a chance to save your parents’ or grandparents’ stories?

Yes, we really are busy. Maybe our family elders don’t like talking about themselves. Maybe they repeat the same story over and over again and it’s grown old. Possibly they’re worried that you will be bored because they know they’ve told the same story over and over again.

But those same old stories are probably the ones their great-great-grandkids will wish they knew.

How to Get Started

1. Recognize your elder’s legacy as precious.

Imagine 20 years from now that your own grandchildren are asking you questions that you can’t answer.

2. Extend an invitation.

It might feel awkward, but it’s not that difficult to ask, “Would you be willing to sit down and talk about your life? We want to record your stories and memories.”

3. Be curious.

I can assure you there are things you don’t know about your older relatives’ lives and experiences.

4. Make a commitment.

This is like anything else that needs to get done. It has to be scheduled. Whether it’s for two hours or a whole day, commit to doing this. Why? Because they will feel honored and appreciated. (And because you will regret it if you don’t.) Turn off your cell phone during this time, and make sure there will be no distractions.

5. Create a list of questions.

Involve your children, siblings and other family members or friends. What do they want to know about the family’s history and about the “star” of the interview?

You probably already know this, but most questions should start with: who, what,  where, when and why.

Brainstorm without censoring, unless you truly know that a topic is too upsetting to ask about.