Reflections on The Postcard

un vrai roman, by Anne Berest

First, a brief check in before I turn to Anne Berest’s book.

I started writing this post a week before my dad died so it’s taken me a while to finish it. My intention with my substack has been to publish twice a month. Life intervened. Now that more than a month has passed since his passing I am starting to get my center back.

In the midst of this I’ve had good news. A small press has offered to publish my book! (Note, my book is not a compilation of what I’ve posted on this substack. It weaves together different stories, although there are areas of overlap.) As I’ve been grieving my dad, I haven’t yet delved into contract terms, but that is definitely on April’s agenda.

I’ve enjoyed hearing from so many of you, either commenting on the page or sending me a personal email (Jennifer.krebs@gmail.com). It has buoyed me during sad times. It makes me understand why people become journalists, never a career I considered.

And now, a few reflections on The Postcard, un roman vrai (true or real novel) by the French writer Anne Berest.

The writer Anne Berest was born in 1979, the year I graduated college. Her reflections of elementary school in Paris – attending schools where she was one of a handful of Jews – reminded me of my childhood in Spencerport. (Indeed, though today centers of Judaism do exist, Jews are less than 1% of the world’s population. Many/most of us have found ourselves alone from time to time.) Anne worried about banter between classmates as she passed them in the hall. She wondered if she was being pointed out, and for what?

I remember looking over my shoulder in Spencerport. Though I can’t say I heard anyone ever say they didn’t like Jews, I feared someone somewhere was saying it. Was I paranoid? Or was this fear baked into my skin? That is one of the questions that I ponder in Stumbling Blocks. If it is baked into my skin, how can I remain positive in the world?

This past fall I had the good fortune to attend my High School soccer team’s 50^th anniversary celebration. Although I was unaware of it at the time, my High School started the girls varsity soccer program I had participated in to comply with the recently passed Title IX. While I was never a particularly gifted athlete, some of my teammates were amazing. Several went on to play collegiate sports and some became coaches. One, who organized the reunion, attended with her daughter, an aspiring soccer coach. I had traveled to the event from the Catskills and had the added rationale of visiting my father and sister. One former teammate flew in from Texas. Our coach came up from Florida. It was a poignant reunion, even if no one asked me about my post-High School athletic triumphs.

Spencerport “Lady Rangers” 1974 (from the High School Year Book)

Among the most memorable conversations of the weekend was one I had with our old coach, whom I remember as both tough and gruff (though blond and petite, think Reese Witherspoon). She asked me about being Jewish in Spencerport.

Coach: “You were the only Jewish kid in the school, weren’t you?”

Me, taken aback but trying not to show it: “We were the only Jewish family in the town while I was in school. I’m sure there are more Jews now.”

Coach: “I thought so. That must have been tough.”

Me, pregnant pause wondering what to say. Finally: “Sometimes it was.”

Coach: “You know my best friend from High School was also the only Jew in my school.” She told me the name of the town where she grew up, an even more rural part of New York. (FYI, New York has areas every bit as rural as West Virginia.) Then she asked, “What was your experience at Spencerport?”

Me, pregnant pause trying to think what to say, and finally: “I don’t remember anyone saying or doing anything overtly anti-Semitic. But I do remember always being worried that someone would say something, especially if we were discussing an event involving Jews, like World War II, or the founding of Israel.”

Coach: “That’s almost word for word what my best friend said to me. That must have been tough for you. I’m sorry I didn’t discuss this with you back then.”

Could have knocked me over with a feather. But in reflection, I think most of the people I grew up with felt similarly. It wasn’t their fault that I was the only Jew in school. Many were my friends.

Summer 2023 Reunion

Anne Berest quotes from a book by the writer (and filmmaker) Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky believes that in every family tree there are “traumatized, unprocessed places that are eternally seeking relief. From these places, arrows are launched toward future generations. Anything that has not been resolved must be repeated.” 

I’d never heard of Jodorowsky -- click here to read an article and see a photo of him in Artland Magazine – but the metaphor of arrows from the past has grabbed me. As I child I always felt there were people beyond my experience who murdered my ancestors. Sometimes they had faces like those I saw in television. Sometimes they were names like Hitler that made me tremble (at least on the inside). Sometimes they were hidden in stories told in German that I couldn’t understand (they were told in German so I wouldn’t understand). Sometimes, when the story of a particular family member was discussed, I did feel as if the person was reaching out for me, wanted me to pay attention, learn their story, find some lesson in their tortured death. It was a heavy responsibility, an invisible chain, when otherwise I had an easy life in a small village where there were no real threats.

I think of those arrows as I read the newspaper. So many people dying, starving, or fleeing from weapons. The as-of-yet conceived will receive the arrows of those suffering today. I wish we could do better.

In the meantime, I hope in writing Stumbling Blocks, in telling the stories of some of the launchers of arrows in my direction, that these souls can finally rest in the goodness of the earth.