Yael Shahar
The best thing about being a writer is being part of a chain of transmission. Today's writers are fulfilling much the same function as the bards of old: we decide what stories are worthy of remembering and passing on.
In his iconic work Zakhor, about Jewish cultural memory, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote: "The Holocaust has already engendered more historical research than any single event in Jewish history, but I have no doubt whatever that its image is being shaped, not at the historian's anvil, but in the novelist's crucible."
This is true of anything that we live through and record. Our writing allow us to transmit crucial lessons in ways that will shape future generations. A novel or a memoir will transmit more than mere facts; it will allow the reader to re-experience something, and come out of that experience with an intimate understanding of what it was like to "be there".
Art, literature, and film play the same role for civilizations as dreams do for individuals; they allow us to integrate our experiences and learn from them. They allow us not just to remember what happened but to be changed by it.
Writing allows us to see the experiences that formed us in a way that holds a mirror up before us. Our challenge is to decide what to do with the reality that is reflected back to us.
In his iconic work Zakhor, about Jewish cultural memory, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote: "The Holocaust has already engendered more historical research than any single event in Jewish history, but I have no doubt whatever that its image is being shaped, not at the historian's anvil, but in the novelist's crucible."
This is true of anything that we live through and record. Our writing allow us to transmit crucial lessons in ways that will shape future generations. A novel or a memoir will transmit more than mere facts; it will allow the reader to re-experience something, and come out of that experience with an intimate understanding of what it was like to "be there".
Art, literature, and film play the same role for civilizations as dreams do for individuals; they allow us to integrate our experiences and learn from them. They allow us not just to remember what happened but to be changed by it.
Writing allows us to see the experiences that formed us in a way that holds a mirror up before us. Our challenge is to decide what to do with the reality that is reflected back to us.
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