Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory

by Vera Schwarcz

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, China scholar Vera Schwarcz explores the meaning of cultural memory in the vastly different Chinese and Jewish traditions. She finds a bridge between the two civilizations-a shared commitment to the transmission of remembrance and to witnessing to the significance of the past-and brings to life the struggles of Chinese and Jewish survivors who managed to preserve the continuity of their long traditions.

Genres: History, Judaism, Jewish, Nonfiction, China

246 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 1998

About the author

Vera Schwarcz (born 1947) (Chinese name: Chinese: 舒衡哲)is Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. Her BA was from Vassar College, with a MA from Yale, where she studied with Jonathan Spence, a MAA from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. From 1979 to 1980, she studied at Peking University as part the first group of American students admitted after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China. In addition to works of history, Schwarcz writes poetry and novellas.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Bridge Across Broken Time, Schwarcz writes about two cultures that treasure memory: Chinese and Jewish and how the concept of memory is intimately linked to the two cultures' pasts. Looking at the concept of cultural memory and how both Chinese and Jewish writers address the concept of memory and remembrance of recent historical traumas (the Holocaust and Cultural Revolution respectively), Schwarcz's book focuses on the transmission of cultural memory and how metaphor, personal remembrance and public commemoration all play a part in memory.

This book though is also an intensely personal and poignant reflection by Schwarcz on the trauma of the Holocaust and the sufferings her parents endured during the War. These parts of the book are the most moving as the reader sees first-hand how memory has shaped recollections of the past and how the author's parents have dealt with the great trauma endured.

Schwarcz uses both Chinese and Jewish sources extensively: poetry, interviews and archival documents, to bring to life the cultural struggles of Chinese and Jewish survivors and how important to both that their traditions are maintained.

[Ludmirska · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book that is so close to heart