This installment of the #ChaiSociety Dispatch is all about reflections - how we reflect on our past, our ancestors and our own identities.
Itβs especially timely, since it comes on the eve of the new month of Elul - a time when Jews traditionally reflect on the previous year, in preparation for Rosh Hashanah the month after it.
Join me as we take a look back, and a look in. Feel free to nosh some pickles while we do - I recommend doing it with a dram of vodka.
In my living room hangs a family photo of the Ur-Lightstones, taken in Montreal around the turn of previous century. Theyβre a posh bunch, posed for a family photo they felt so important they made close to a dozen copies that were passed down through various branches of the family. Before his passing, my grandfather wrote the names of everyone on it - his father, his uncles, his grandparents. In the middle of the photo, however, he left two question marks for the names of his most distant photographed ancestors - a well coifed woman in a sheitel and her husband, a large man with a lionβs mane of a beard, top hat, and a prominent βLightstoneβ nose.
The Grajewo Gang, the OG Lightstones, ready to rock Montreal in 1901
These pictures are found in Jewish homes throughout the country in living rooms, bedrooms or photo albums - records of our ancestors that clawed their way to the New World. Even if we are not lucky enough to have them, we can see a reflection of them in those moments of profound Jewish connection, or guilt, we sometimes feel. The connection is real, but what would they think of us? What would we think of them?