I have never actually observed this holiday, but like many other Jews my age, I mourn lost worlds – specifically the one my maternal grandmother fled on November 9, 1938.  At the age of 19, my grandmother, Helga Rabinowitsch, left her native Germany with her younger brother for the United States.  She never saw her parents, her community, or her home, again. After the war, without ever knowing the specifics of her parents’ fates, my grandmother moved forward with her life the only way she knew how, by abandoning the past altogether – the good along with the bad – never again speaking German and keeping silent about her childhood and the world she left behind.

I spend a great deal of my time thinking about my grandmother’s loss and trying to reclaim the world of her childhood.  I am motivated in part by a desire to share the burden of memory and history with my grandmother and hopefully lighten her load.  Mostly though, Helga’s silence has barred me from any sense of continuity between past and present, fueling my desire to know intimately her lost world so as to better understand my own and my place in it – as a granddaughter, daughter, sister, wife, and musician.

I have dedicated myself to understanding the historical context in which my grandmother grew up.  I learned to speak both Yiddish and German, in order to express myself in the languages my grandparents and great grandparents once used to express themselves.  I lived in Germany for two years, hoping that, by inhabiting the physical space of my ancestors, I could somehow access the atmospheres and personalities that had once filled those same cobblestone streets and 19th century buildings.

I also gathered the courage to start unearthing the memories my grandmother had so carefully buried – slowly and gently.  I wasn’t looking for the kind of information I could find in history books. Rather, I was seeking snapshots: What were her favorite foods as a little girl? What games did she play with her friends?  Where did her family go on vacation?  What were her parents like?

So I called her on the phone.  Her favorite meal growing up?  Franks and potato salad.  I informally pestered her with questions over the kitchen table.  Where did her family go on vacation?  To the mountains and to the sea.  Over the last three years, I have extracted her memories in a more disciplined way, filming, photographing, taking notes, and traveling – this time to Eastern Europe, where Helga’s parents were born and eventually perished.  With the help of my mother and aunt, documents have been discovered, timelines have emerged, and new context has been established.

Over 100 letters were uncovered in my grandmother’s attic, letters written to her and her brother from Latvia, where my great grandparents fled when they could no longer stay in Germany.  In addition to the heartbreak and desperation that begins and ends each letter, there is also such intimacy and love.  In one letter, my great grandmother worries over how skinny my great uncle looks in a picture he has sent.  In another, my great grandmother tells my grandmother that she has brought my grandmother’s favorite organza dress from Leipzig and will deliver it to Memphis herself, once she and my great grandfather receive their visas to the United States.

In conjunction with my research and documentation, I wrote and recorded a concept album as a way to access, recreate, and re-imagine my grandmother’s lost world – and to process my relationship to it.  This album, entitled Silver And Ash, will be released on Rounder Records on September 14^th, 2010.

Neither Tisha B’Av nor my exploration of Helga’s history are focused solely on memory and mourning.  They both put a premium on self-examination in the face of loss and the renewal that can come from this.   My journey back and forth in time has brought me much closer to my grandmother, allowed me to know her world and the parents she lost, and has provided me with a long sought after sense of continuity between past introspection. 

So today, on Tisha B’Av, maybe those of us not going to synagogue can begin compiling our own personal Books of Lamentations.  We can sit down with our grandparents or parents and ask them to resurrect their lost worlds for us.  We can mourn with them.  For them and for ourselves, and in so doing, begin to create renewed worlds of our own.

Photograph by Ted Barron

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My name is Clare Burson.

I write songs, sing, and play the guitar and the violin.

I have independently released 2 full length albums of my own material and am preparing to release the third on Rounder Records sometime this spring. My music has been described as "world-weary like Lucinda Williams’, expressive like Kathleen Edwards’, mysterious like Jolie Holland’s."

I grew up in Tennessee and currently live in Brooklyn, NY.

From March 2007 until March 2009 I was a Six Points Fellow.

I heard about the Six Points Fellowship from a college friend. Even before applying, I felt like I’d won the lottery – the fact that something like this existed just blew my mind. In years past, I had searched in vain for any sort of fellowship or grant that could fund a somewhat commercially-minded singer-songwriter like myself. Here it was – finally! If selected, I would be funded to make a new album, plus the Six Points community could provide me with a safe and stimulating space to bring my Jewishness into my creative work in a way that hopefully could expand my reach as an artist instead of limiting it.

You see, despite the fact that I was (and still am) a decidedly secular musician and songwriter, I had been toying with the idea of incorporating my Jewishness into my music for years. I didn’t want to lose the universal tone of my earlier work, but I did want to create a cycle of songs that spoke to my experience as a Jewish woman from the American South with grandparents and great grandparents who had come to Memphis, TN (of all places), fleeing persecution in Central and Eastern Europe.

I grew up within the Reform community in Tennessee, with my southernness and Jewishness coexisting comfortably – I ate fried chicken at Shabbes dinner and recited the Hamotzi with a thick Southern drawl. I played classical violin and eventually branched out into bluegrass and old time fiddling when my family moved from Memphis to Nashville. In college, I majored in modern European history at Brown University. During that time, I set aside my southernness and delved into my family’s roots in Europe. I learned Yiddish, played klezmer music, and took some Russian history courses, but mostly, I focused on Germany, the country my maternal grandparents fled in 1937 and 1938 for new lives in the United States. I learned German, and I lived in Germany for 2 years.

When I came home, I turned my attention back to the present. I spent a few years playing folk music in Boston and eventually moved back to Nashville to make a go of it as a singer-songwriter in Country Music USA. I grew as a musician and writer and began to develop a sound and songwriting style of my own. However, the Jewish element of my life was missing – both in terms of a community and in terms of my music. So, in June of 2005, I relocated to Brooklyn to focus on creating a life for myself that could better integrate my life as a musician with my love of Jewish history, ritual, and culture.

My Six Points project, SILVER AND ASH, did just that. It allowed me to bring together two of my greatest passions. Of course, it evolved over the course of the 2 year fellowship term. I began with the idea of wanting broadly to create fundamentally ‘Jewish’ work within the more secular frame of Americana music. That ‘Jewish’ core eventually revealed itself to me as the heritage and history I had studied in college – the stories told to my by one grandmother and the stories kept silent by another. In the end, I created a song cycle, performance piece, and a songbook, which imagine my grandmother’s life in Germany, from her birth in 1919 to her escape in 1938, and explore my own struggles with rupture, silence, guilt, empathy, and continuity.

At the risk of sounding totally corny, the process of creating SILVER AND ASH changed my life. On a nuts and bolts level, the funding and the career development sessions provided by Six Points allowed me quit my ‘day job’ and focus fully on my music. On an artistic level, I feel like I have created the most meaningful and accomplished collection of songs thus far in my career. On a personal level, in addition to providing community and texture to my life, this project has brought my family closer together – bringing new stories to light and encouraging dialogue on subjects long considered taboo.

I don’t know quite how to wrap this up other than to say, thank you – to the Foundation for Jewish Culture, JDub Records, and Avoda Arts, the UJA Federation of NYC – and to anyone eligible to apply – send in your application!

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