Narrative maps and Jewish geography: A discussion of place in North American Yiddish migrant personal narratives

• In Event: Navigating Transnational Modes of Jewishness in 20th Century America

Abstract

Through the long history of Jewish migrations, as communities dispersed across the globe, individuals were separated from family and friends who either stayed behind or traveled different paths. By its very nature, migration meant people moved from well-known places and spaces to unfamiliar ones. This situation was no different during the Great Migration of Jews from Europe to North America around the turn of the twentieth century. The Great Migration does stand out as the first time that a large number of Jews were able, and encouraged, to write down their personal stories. In this paper, I will examine the poetics Yiddish speaking migrants mobilized in their personal stories to connect between the international places they and their greater social network travelled and called home. I will explore how migrant narrators created a socially relevant and uniquely Jewish geography, a map that was/is meaningful to them and their audience members.
My research is based on Yiddish language personal narratives, published and archival, written by migrants from Eastern Europe, mostly what is now Poland and Ukraine, to Canada who arrived by the 1930s. In my analysis, I utilize theories about people’s relationship to space, such as Michel de Certeau’s analysis of the practice of walking in THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE (L.A.: 1984) and Tim Ingold’s discussion of mapping in THE PERCEPTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT (New York: 2007), alongside folk literary analysis such as Charles Briggs’ COMPETENCE IN PERFORMANCE (Philadelphia: 1988) and Michal Held’s LET ME TELL YOU A STORY (Jerusalem: 2009). My paper uncovers the ways Jewish migrants made meaningful connections between places by telling stories of their own experiences, creating a cultural geography which crossed continents and reinforced social networks and micro-diaspora identities.

Author

• Vardit Lightstone