March 2010 – “Our Homes, Our Story” in Sh’ma Journal
In the Mellah (Jewish Quarter), Sefrou, Morocco, early 1900s
The March 2010 “Stories and Jewish Narrative” edition of Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility featured an article by two Diarna researchers, Lauren Bahary Wilner and Adam Eilath, and Jason Guberman-Pfeffer, Diarna’s coordinator. Entitled “Our Homes, Our Story,” the article explores how Diarna “marks a beginning toward preserving and reconstructing a more comprehensive, interactive, and ‘living’ exploration of the heartland of Jewish heritage” in the Middle East. Here are two excerpts:
…Documenting sites in this manner also creates an image of one’s heritage not wholly available through text, photos, or stories alone. For Lauren, Diarna enlivens her mother’s roots in a country she couldn’t imagine visiting now, the Islamic Republic in Iran. “I have studied Farsi; I have attempted Persian cooking; and I wear my great-grandmother’s jewelry to try to connect with my identity. But when will it be safe for me to visit the neighborhood where my grandparents met? Now I have a virtual passport to experience the sweep of 2,700 years of Jewish life in Iran.
One of our researchers, Adam, whose mother’s family is from the rural village of Nabeul, Tunisia, yearned to discover what Jewish life in Nabeul had been like, only to find that ‘hardly anyone in my family could give me a good sense of that and, even if they did, the line between myth and history was blurred. It was not until I realized that I could see the places where my family had lived for centuries that this almost mythical place became real.’
