Barbara Myerhoff’s book, also portrayed through a short film Number Our Days, is a moving representation of her anthropological study on an elderly Jewish community in Venice, California. Her research contains anthropological fieldwork on aging from the early 70s at the Israel Levin Center, where elderly Jews could gather and create a sense of community and rituals. The film begins with Myerhoff explaining how, in a way, many anthropologists try to put themselves into a native’s head to understand them, but that is false because it is just an “exercise in imagination” as you will never truly be that person. For Myerhoff, there is a validity she feels in her studying aged Jewish people because she knows that that is her future. She also explains: “At first, I wasn’t sure if it was anthropology or a personal quest.” The community center serves as a second family for many of its members, as many have lost their loved ones and have no one left, but the center is a place where “death and the outside world are transcendent.” The members are there for each other to mourn loved ones as well as those who pass within the community as they have so many shared life experiences. Myerhoff explains, “Because they have been left alone, they turn to each other to create a way of life based on their sacred history and Yiddish language. They can weep and rejoice, grieve and then sing, with a sudden shift of mood that is common to the culture.”
Maury Rosen, the community’s director, explains his need to protect and preserve the community from a world that often overlooks the elderly, emphasizing their value within the center: “In this center, they are visible.” Despite struggles with crippling loneliness, many of their problems are forgotten on Shabbat, when the members celebrate timeless rituals at an earlier hour of the day, doing Kiddush, lighting candles, and “the spirit of the Sabbath is unaffected by the hour.” Meals are donated by wealthier Jews from the area, and some members find accepting these charity meals on Shabbat humiliating. “They have always been givers, not takers,” however, “the spirit of the Sabbath absorbs it all.” Myerhoff underscores the idea that when these individuals pass away, their way of life will fade with them. The film poignantly ends with a performance of a Yiddish song about childhood and memory: “Childhood years, sweet childhood years, always awake in my memory. When I recall you, I am filled with pain, oh how quickly I’ve grown old,” reminding us that aging is not death but rather a new phase of life, as Myerhoff notes to herself.
Myerhoff also explains how “the world of the shtetl shaped the center men and women. Their shtetl childhood provided them with the basic materials on which they drew in formulating responses to the New World” (246). She emphasizes the fact that the center’s “very existence must be seen as a major accomplishment, emerging spontaneously as a result of two conditions that characterize the members: continuities between past and present circumstance, and social isolation”(9), almost as if the shtetl life still lives on within the community. One quote I found really powerful was a conversation between Myerhoff and a man named Shmuel about the concept of a culture: “Now I will tell you about culture. Culture is that garden. This is not a thing of nations. It is not about Goethe and yeshivas. It is children playing. Culture is the simple grass through which the wind blows sweetly and each grass blade bends softly to the caress of the wind. It is like a mother who would pick up her child and kiss it, with her tenderness that she gave birth to it. We don’t see this anymore. In the present time we see nations. They are not natural outgrowings. Their roots are too harsh. They grew up too fast. They have not got that natural sweetness…It was a sweetness in the middle of fear and oppression”(60).
In Number Our Days, the importance of a shared physical space and a remembered rituals reflects how deep connections within the Jewish community have endured for decades, as it provides a sense of belonging and identity. Despite loneliness and the ailments of aging, this center offers them emotional and spiritual support, especially through shared rituals and shared language (Yiddish) that may be reminiscent of a nostalgic past. There is a nostalgic feel to Myerhoff’s work, as there are some parallels to the communal, nostalgic descriptions of a community that is slowly fading, like the shtetl that longer exists from Life is With People. From an anthropological perspective, I think Myerhoff’s work exemplifies the value of a Jewish ethnographer studying a Jewish community. Her personal connection to the culture allows her to truly understand and care for the people she is interviewing, and in turn, the members feel extremely comfortable speaking with her as they know she is a “nice Jewish girl.” She is able to highlight the beauty of a community that outsiders might overlook, reinforcing that ethnographers who share cultural ties with their subjects can bring a deeper understanding to their fieldwork, something that was touched on in Feldman’s article. There, Feldman notes how “the ethnographer of Jews and Judaism must find a way to move closer to the Jewish subject by engaging first-hand the diversity of cultural expression that transpires in one lifetime” (116). What would this ethnography have looked like if it was done by someone who wasn’t Jewish? Would it have made a difference? However, Myerhoff does note at one point that there was still a barrier between herself and her subjects. “In the course of a conversation with Shmuel…I confessed my fears about not being able to do justice to the materials he was giving me. There was so much I did not understand. As usual, he was severe but not unfair in his response. ‘You don’t understand. How could you expect to understand? You ask me all these things, but you know nothing. You don’t know Yiddish. You don’t know Hebrew. You don’t know Aramaic. You don’t know Russian and not Polish. You have not set your eyes on any part of the place we lived in. How can you expect to understand?”(26).
Myerhoff’s research reflects the importance of memory and personal experiences while understanding a specific ethnic group. Growing up, I cherished the time I spent with my grandparents, both holocaust survivors, constantly clinging to the stories they told of their past. In high school, I often volunteered with an organization called Dorot, which assists the Jewish elderly population through various programs. I frequently visited Paula, a youthful ninety-year-old woman in my neighborhood, and was captivated by her thorough retellings of childhood memories and her story of surviving the holocaust — stories she’d gathered over a lifetime that encapsulate who she was. I agree with the message of the film that often, the elderly can be made to seem invisible, but especially in the Jewish community, they are invaluable in their experience and memories in saving the history of the aged generation. While studying a group that you do not belong to can be extremely fruitful and important, I also think that someone studying a group they belong to can have a very powerful impact on the research.
I enjoyed reading your post, Julia. I agree with all the things you said above, but I really enjoyed your synopsis of the major themes within the film/book. In particular, you talk a lot about the idea of community and togetherness. The elders in the Jewish community of Venice, California, relied heavily on being with one another. Through the environment that they constructed for themselves, they were able to recreate the close-knit community of the shtetl that Zborowski and Herzog describe in “Life is with People.” Both pieces highlight a vital notion- the importance of upholding tradition and the ease of doing so when everyone else around you is doing the same.
Myerhoff explains this by describing the community’s practice of Shabbat. She also says that “because they have been left alone, they turn to each other to create a way of life based on their sacred history and Yiddish language.” The outcome of her anthropological work stands in stark contrast to parts of the film Europa Europa, which highlight the difficulties that come with upholding tradition when you are in it alone and everyone else wants to punish you for it.
Thank you for your commentary! Your thoughts about your own experience with older members of the Jewish community really resonated with me. I think that in communities where people have not been allowed to grow old, there is a special appreciation for the elderly. I feel this both in the Jewish community and in the queer community, where many people who would’ve been elders now died of AIDS. There is an appreciation for the ability to grow old when so many people have not been allowed to. For Myerhoff, as you said, being an old Jewish person is her future so she might have special insights into the community she is studying. I wonder if this is influenced by a particular appreciation of the elderly, due to the many people in their generation who were killed too young.
I think you did a great job describing the differences between the book and the film as well as how they complement one another. While it’s possible to visualize scenes that are written in a book, it is a completely different experience to view the real footage. It was very moving to see these elders and to hear about their daily struggles. You certainly could see their resilience and desire to keep living life and making memories while at the same time experiencing losses and health issues. These are people who survived the Holocaust and have endured much pain. However, their Jewish identity remains to be very important to them and it is evident by their desire to keep traditions alive. In order to not be erased, they will continue to live their lives and to make sure people remember them.
I find the question of whether or not the fact that this ethnography was done by a Jewish person affects the overall piece an interesting one. The thing about her examining a group of elderly Jews is that while they all have that Jewish connection to each other, there are still obvious and important gaps between Myerhoff herself and the people she is studying. The fact of the matter is that while the researcher’s personal ties shouldn’t affect the objective truth they are trying to document, in this case this does seem to come into play. Theoretically it should not matter whether or not Myerhoff was Jewish. That being said, the willingness of the people she is studying to share with her might have been affected, but the actually material should not differ. I appreciate the way you draw on your own experience talking with holocaust survivors on a personal level, because when it comes down to it, peoples willingness to share has a whole lot to do with our willingness to listen and learn.
I enjoyed reading your post as well as everyone’s comments, and I think you and Myerhoff captured well why aging would be particularly important to study in Jewish communities. In the film, one part I found really interesting was the depiction of traditions for Shabbat, and specifically the idea that this day was essential because it brought everyone together in community. The loneliness that many of these elders experience was one of the main themes of the book and the movie, so when we think about the role that religion plays in either the shtetls or in Number Our Days, I think it’s important to note that in this case, Number Our Days paints religion as essential to survival. I mean this in that connection is vital and probably life-prolonging for many of the elders in this community, and religious rituals are described as one main way that they receive that. While I’m not sure exactly how this observation plays into a wider picture, I think survival is shown to be an important piece of the role that religion takes up in Number Our Days.
I loved your blog post. I think that you hit the nail on the head with the way that elderly people can be considered invisible in society, and how communities work to keep them visible. I also like how you highlighted the way that they struggled to accept help in the community when they have always been the givers. I do have one question for you. Do you think that the man’s comment about her not speaking yiddish or knowing where they came from through lived experience shape the way that they interacted with her? Do you think her fieldwork would have been different if she had learned a little bit of yiddish to build rapport between her and the members of the community center?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Myerhoff’s work. I really appreciated your insights into her personal connection with the community, especially how her identity as a Jewish ethnographer helped her build deeper rapport. You made a great point about how the ethnography might have been different if it was conducted by a non Jewish anthropologist her insider status definitely provided a unique perspective, but it’s also interesting how she acknowledges the limits of even an insider’s understanding. This shows that even shared identity has its boundaries when it comes to interpreting cultural nuances. Do you think Myerhoff’s identity ever made it challenging for her to stay objective, or was it consistently an advantage for her? Your discussion about the shtetl as a model for continuity at the Israel Levin Center really resonated with me it serves as a powerful reminder of how memory and community can endure across different contexts. Thanks again for such a thoughtful post!