Saturday, July 2, 2011

"To Honor and Preserve: The Memories of Leo and Sylvia Dashefsky"

This exhibition is presented to you by the Museum through the cooperation of Batya Dashefsky, their daughter. She has created a lovely twenty-three minute slide show about her parents, her family et al. I recommend you visit this exhibition and watch her presentation (with music and narration) and think about how you might use your own unique creativity to honor your own family. This presentation spans many decades, from life in Erope to immigration, to immigrant Jewish life in America in the 1920s, Brownsville, Palestine, Syracuse, New York and Philadelphia.Mention is made of such organizations as Pioneer Women, Shomer Hatzair, the Labor Zionist Movement et al. Letters of correspondence are read, e.g. from pre-war Bialystok. Mention is also made of Grodno, Rezina in Bessarabia and Narewka, Poland.Also, Batya's father Leo dedicated his retirement to translating original Yiddish-language poetry and thus within the Museum' Yiddish Vinkl, if you have a mind to, you can read the English translations of such Yiddish poets and writers as Sholem Aleichem, Mordechai Gebirtig, Itzhak Katzenelson, H. Leivick, J. L. Peretz, Avraham Reisen and Yehoash.The exhibition begins here. This exhibition is ever-evolving; as the Museum receives more interesting, creative works of those who have honored their ancestors, they too will be added to this growing exhibition.

Elaine Rosenberg Miller has also written a small piece about her father's aunt which is included within the "To Honor and Preserve" exhibition. You can find it here.