Blog#68- 4/26/21
MAKING A CONNECTION TO THE PAST
By Richard Davis
Youth is a time of great possibilities. It can also be highlighted by arrogance and ignorance. Those qualities may not become apparent until we have moved a few decades down the road. I have been thinking about these issues in relation to the history of my family.
When my grandparents and other relatives were alive I never asked them about where they came from and about the history of our family.
Three of my grandparents came from Eastern Europe and they arrived in this country during a wave of immigration when Jews were looking for a better life in the “golden land”.
When I traveled to Israel in 1970 I met cousins of my father who had walked from Russia to Palestine in 1920. They kept asking me if I wanted to ask them any questions about their life and, being a foolish youth of 21, I said, “No.” I regret never hearing their story.
They told me bits and pieces during the few weeks we were together while I was recovering from a bout with cholera. They were political people and they had put their hope in the Russian revolutions. They believed that life would get better and that Jews would be treated more fairly if the revolution succeeded. Life only got worse for Russians Jews.
I can’t imagine what it must have taken to give up your life and everything you own to walk from Russia to Palestine in 1920. I met a number of their local friends who had made the same journey and they are people whose faces still stay with me.
As I head into the final decades of my life I think more about where my family came from. I have asked other family members and it is clear they were similarly arrogant and ignorant in their youth about family history. I have done a small amount of genealogical research and have an approximate idea of the region where my grandparents lived in Eastern Europe.
I remain curious and have recently read a number of books about the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. They have given me a general sense of where my family came from and what kind of culture they lived in. I will have to be satisfied with that kind of general information, but it does provide me with a personal sense of history.
A few years ago I was attracted to Klezmer music. Klezmer was music played by Jewish musicians in Eastern Europe for centuries. Small group of itinerant musicians would go from village to village to play music for special occasions. Weddings would last a week or more and much of the Klezmer repertoire includes a wide variety of wedding songs.
I have played the clarinet on a very low amateur level most of my life and it is an instrument I was always attracted to. The clarinet also happens to be one of the main Klezmer instruments. As far as I know, none of my immigrant relatives were musicians, but it is possible there was a Klezmer or two among the descendants that stayed in Europe.
A few years ago I began taking lessons with a Klezmer clarinetist whose father was a well-known Klezmer clarinetist. I immediately felt something playing that music that I have never felt before. Suddenly there was a depth of emotion that came from a place that was close to my soul. I feel it every time I play Klezmer music.
I will never lead a famous Klezmer band, but I will continue to play the music on my level because it is as close as I can come to understanding who I am and where I came from.
