After being woken up by a woman dressed in traditional Belarusian costume who brought our breakfast, we went on a tour of the Nanosy Complex. Among the stunning views of the two lakes surrounding the complex was a German bunker from World War I, a bizarre relic that seemed to be pruned back to remind… Read More Recreating a Photograph from 100 Years Ago

In an oversized bus that Clare Fester and Robby Adler-Peckerar procured for Helix, we arrived at the Nanosy Complex, a postmodern, post-Soviet reconstruction of a “traditional” Belarusian village on the beautiful banks of Lake Narach. The village was the brainchild of a very wealthy Russian who enjoyed hunting, fishing, and recreating “authentic” Belarusian villages. This… Read More Exploring the Present through Memory Maps: Volozhin and Smorgon

Our first day in Minsk began with our morning poem (a daily Helix tradition) and then we embarked on a walking tour of the city. As we started out, we learned that the factory across the street from our hotel was the historic factory that features in Moyshe Kulbak’s Zelmenyaners. This late 1920s Kulbak novel,… Read More Life and Death: A Tour of Minsk and Its Surroundings

Minsk—the letters at the airport screamed out my arrival for my second Helix adventure. I had just come from a family cruise in the Baltics, where I had a few harrowing moments like being interrogated by the Russian secret police in St. Petersburg on behalf of my friend from Moscow who had broken the law… Read More Helix 2019, The Adventure Begins

Lately I’ve been thinking about the 1930s, Hitler’s rise to power, and Nazism not just in Germany but around the world.  I’m writing a book about a Dutch Jewish cabaret singer, who married a non-Jewish German socialist, who had settled in Holland in 1936.  In my search for information about his time in Holland, I… Read More When Nazism Came to Los Angeles

We have been crossing borders for the past three days, since my last posting. As I wrote this we are on the road from Daugavpils (the name in Latvian, Dvinsk in Russian, Dineburg in Yiddish) to Vilnius (known as Vilna in Yiddish and Wilno in Polish) and are crossing the Latvian/Lithuanian border. Both states have… Read More From Lukashenko’s Belarus to the EU: Polotsk, Breslau, Daugavpils, and Lithuanian Shtetls

On our first evening in Vilnius (Vilna, Wilno, ווילנע), we heard reports from our tour guide that the city’s newly elected mayor had finally decided to remove the four statues adoring the Green Bridge, one of the most important crossings of the Neris River, which runs through the city. The four statues–one with two hetero… Read More Vilna Says Its Final Goodbye to Its Nearly 50 Year Soviet Past

Once upon a time, Rabbi Eliyohu Ben Shloyme roamed the streets of this beautiful medieval city, which has had a continuous Jewish population since the mid 14th century. This 18th century rabbi, who earned the name “the Vilna Gaon” or ” genius” (one translation of the Hebrew word “gaon”) fought fierce battles with the Hasidim,… Read More Vilnius, Vilna, Wilno, ווילנע: Once the Jerusalem of Lithuania

The singing began in a courtyard of a building, opposite the city’s Lenin statue, that once was the place of Marc Chagall’s home in Lyozna. Singing is an integral part of Yiddishkayt’s Helix program. At first I didn’t understand its power, but as we move from city to city and see the effect our voices… Read More Coming Home to Chagall in Lyozna and Vitebsk