Is the suitcase getting bigger? Or smaller?

Is the suitcase growing larger over the generations, or is it getting smaller? And why does it matter?

I am expanding “The Last Jews of Liuh” project to include later generations. I’ve started collaborating with Midjourney (AI) for this next part of the work, having used DALL-E for the portraits of  the people of Liuh (the shtetl where my paternal grandfather was born and where she lived until she left for America in 1911 at age 14). I like the switch because I am dealing with more contemporary characters here and Midjourney gives a distinct look and feel to the prompting. 

In a session with mentor Charlotte (I am incredibly lucky to have three mentors this term), I was talking about assimilation — in particular, the gradual assimilation of Jews and Jewish culture into the broader Christian American culture. And I said, as Charlotte and I explored, The work is about how the suitcase never really disappears; we carry it with us throughout the generations, full of stories and myths, and memories, and fantasies and the like. The suitcase swells as time moves forward. 

“But, what if it’s the opposite?” Charlotte asked. “What if the suitcase is diminishing over time so that the connection to the identity is less a burden than a ghost?” 

We compared several of the images I have made so far. Two of them appear in the diptic above. The one on the left could be my grandmother or any of the  millions (literally) of Jewish women who emigrated from the Pale of Settlement (Russian Empire) between 1880 and 1920. She sits with her world goods, contained within the suitcase, in what is probably the downstairs of a tenement apartment in a city someplace in the Eastern United States; e.g., New York City. The year is 1911. 

Compare this vibrant woman, with the strength to leave everything and nearly everyone she knows, to the woman on the right. The year is 1952. 

This is the daughter of the Liuh refugee. She appears as if in a painting by Edward Hopper. Her dress is sexy. She has changed her name so that she s no longer dentifiable as Jewish. She is the female vocalist with the Skip Russell Swing Band and only Skip himself knows her identity. Turns out he’s Jewish, too, but tells no one. 

True, the woman on the right enjoys what most would see as a more glamorous and exciting life than my grandmother her tenement and the relentless penny-pinching in which she would engage as the controller of the family budget and the shopper and the chef, stretching a pound of kosher meat to feed seven people two times in a week. 

But, can we also see that the woman on the right is isolated? She is alone with her suitcase in what might well be a cheap hotel in someplace like Buffalo or Hartford. She is unengaged. She does not face the camera. This is the second generation of Liuh immigrants. 

And what about the next generation of Liuh descendants? Women reading Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir. Women burning bras. Women protesting the patriarchy. Women demanding (but not getting) the Equal Rights Amendment. 

And then another generation after that. And another after that. Some of these generations will not even identify as beng Jewish, having assimilated and inter-married, lost interest, etc. 

This most recent generation. This is El (Eleanor) Portensky, a great-great granddaughter of one of the immigrants from Liuh. El identifies as a butch lesbian. Since October 7 and the mass murder of 1,200 Israelis by the terrorist group Hamas, El increasingly identifies as Jewish. She has started attending Friday night services with her parents. She has started asking questions about her heritage. Her suitcase. 

El Potensky lives in a world where identity is in flux. A person’s gender, sexuality,  pronoun, degree of wokeness (or not), political affiliation, degree of activism. And, increasingly, religion. Especially for Jews. Or so it feels to me. 

October 7th was a moment in history  Jewish people will  remember for the intensity of the wake-up call. We are Jews. Even if we celebrate Christmas or change our names or wear Lily Pulitzer and shoes with pink pompoms or work for an ultra WASP-y real estate agency, we are Jews. 

The work continues. I wrote this blog primarily to capture my thoughts. I ask myself, Is the ancestral suitcase growing larger? Is the weight of ancestry felt heavy in the air? In our bones and bodies? Or is the suitcase diminishing in size? Are we losing the connection? 

Much food for thought. MUCH.