24:3-4 Spring-Summer 2003 - Jewish Genealogical Society

Next-Gen Genealogy continued
The first StoryCorps booth is scheduled to open in October
in Grand Central Terminal. Isay hopes to have a
second NYC booth at the Eldridge Street Synagogue on
the Lower East Side, where he would expect Jewish families
to be particularly inspired to participate. From this
idea, Isay spins off into a discussion of the bar mitzvah
project, which he calls Zakhor (Hebrew for “Remember”).
In Zakhor, boys or girls would do a StoryCorps-style
interview with an older family member, prior to their
bar mitzvah. Here, too, a permanent record would be
made, and a copy sent to Isay’s company, Sound Portraits,
where he hopes it would become part of an archive
of the American Jewish experience.
“Then, when they hit 18, the children could revisit the
recording,” Isay suggests. With the benefit of five years
of maturing, the18-year-olds would glean more from their
initial conversation. He or she could then go on to do
another family interview or train other children for their
bar mitzvah interviews. This aspect of the project–which
Isay calls Chai (Hebrew for 18)–is, he says “A matter of
keeping a long-range view to the process, and adds a
sense of giving back something to the community.”
Dave Isay’s own bar mitzvah, which took place in 1979,
didn’t have the emotional resonance he hopes Zakhor will
add. “It’s a big blur,” he says today. “The rabbi was a perfectly
nice guy, but it didn’t mean a lot.” However, he recalls,
“It was around that time that I interviewed my grandparents.
But I have never found that tape, and it’s physically
painful to think about the loss of those voices.” He
pauses, then adds, “This is something that Story Corps will
take care of. We’ll have an archive, a place where the memories
will be preserved for generations.”
Isay is interested in attracting support for Zakhor. The
National Foundation for Jewish Culture has shown interest,
and Swarthmore professor of religion Nathaniel
Deutsch has agreed to serve as project consultant. But
Zakhor is stalled at the moment because Isay has not
been able to raise sufficient funding. He hopes that the
launch of StoryCorps will attract attention and perhaps
help get Zakhor moving.
A Role for Jewish Genealogists
In my conversation with Isay, I suggested that the Jewish
genealogical world would be very interested in
Zakhor. The program’s tag line–“Building the Jewish
future by preserving its past”–is, of course, precisely what
our genealogical research is about. Isay expressed interest
in seeing how we might, in fact, work together, and I
expect a number of genealogical and Jewish organizations
to follow up on this opportunity.
Individually, however, we don’t have to wait. Every one
of us can take Zakhor’s core–marrying family-history
interviews and genealogical research with the bar mitzvah
process–and spread it to our friends and family. In the
end, everyone will win.
For additional information on StoryCorps, visit the
website http://storycorps.net.
Ira Wolfman is a longstanding JGS member and the author of
Climbing Your Family Tree: Online and Offline Genealogy
for Kids (Workman Publishing, 2002). Please send comments
and suggestions for future “Next-Gen Genealogy” columns
to iwolfman@poecom.com. ✡
Dorot • Spring-Summer 2003 -19-