By a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For

HOLOCAUST KICKBOXER: DESCENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

NICOLE WAGENBERG

A dissertation

submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

PSYCHOLOGY

MERIDIAN UNIVERSITY

2012

NICOLE WAGENBERG

2012

HOLOCAUST KICKBOXER: DESCENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

NICOLE WAGENBERG

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PSYCHOLOGY

MERIDIAN UNIVERSITY

2012

This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of Meridian University by:

______Lisa Herman, Ph.D. Dissertation Advisor

______Melissa Schwartz, Ph.D. Dissertation Chair

______Shoshana Fershtman, Ph.D. Doctoral Project Committee Member

This work is dedicated to our capacity to grow, transform, and evolve.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto, Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto, Los dos materiales que forman mi canto. Y el canto de ustedes que es el mismo canto, Y el canto de todos que es mi propio canto.

Thanks to life that has given me so much. It has given me laughter and has given me tears. That way I can distinguish between joy and pain, Both of which make up my song. And your song is the same song. And everyone’s song is my own song.

Violeta Parra “Gracias a la Vida”

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frighten us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around us. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we liberate from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles

ABSTRACT

HOLOCAUST KICKBOXER: DESCENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA

Nicole Wagenberg

Focusing on third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors, this study asked: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The hypothesis was, as affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power.

The Literature Review covers survivor guilt and intergenerational trauma as well as the experience of the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Other relevant resources reviewed include ritual and expressive arts in relation to metabolizing historical trauma.

Although much research has been done with Holocaust survivors and their descendants, literature is lacking on the effect upon third generation survivors, particularly pertaining to guilt and possible transformation through group ritual, culturally relevant practices, and expressive arts.

The methodology utilized was Imaginal Inquiry. Eight participants, self-identified as third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors, met with the researcher for a one- day meeting. Through ritual, ecstatic practices, dialogue, and drama therapy, they shared and explored ways in which the Holocaust impacted them; they tapped into previously unexpressed affective states and processed their survivor guilt.

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The study’s Cumulative Learning was: When third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered to explore and give voice to their experience, they processed the conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the broader community, communitas was created which brought healing about these experiences. This Cumulative Learning is based upon four major Learnings: First when the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their personal and family

Holocaust stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Second with the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair and guilt.

Third through engaging with the Friend voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Fourth when third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women.

The study’s reflections focus on how understanding the process of moving from survivor guilt to authentic power can be deepened through the myths of the descent of

Inanna and of Lilith, and the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam. Inanna’s journey into the unexplored dark places of self and humanity can lead into an empowered and individuated self.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my family for their generous support, for learning and growing with me and for their deep love. Thanks to my ancestors, those who I met in person and those who

I continue to meet in spirit. Feeling your support towards this work is validating.

I have no words that describe my appreciation for my therapist S.J. Her brilliant insight and constant support feeds my being in radically exciting, and positive ways. She is very much a part of this dissertation.

Thanks to Michaelle Goerlitz who joined me in the middle of this journey despite the fact that I warned her that we might not make it. As it turns out, her love, patience, and consistent presence is what helped me make it.

I hold deep gratitude for the dissertation support staff at Meridian University for all the ways that they have made this work possible. I thank Melissa Schwartz, Lisa

Herman, and Shoshana Fershtman for their encouragement and support and for their insightful feedback that helped me bring focus and clarity. Their academic and professional body of work that is very relevant to the topic of this dissertation has been an inspiration and has contributed greatly towards this work.

Thank you to Terri Aspen for graciously helping me hold the group on the day of the study and to Mary-Angela Fatta for filming the meeting and most importantly for sharing a home with me during this process and teaching me how to lovingly care and tend to the other. Thank you to Cohort 12 for a tansformative experience. Especially, thanks to Jessica, Cheryl, Mary, and Summer for our holding circle and loving support.

viii ix

Thank you to Anne Coelho and Isoke Femi for initiating me into this process.

Your mentoring during my school years prepared me to do this work. Thank you for believing in me and for supporting me during times of despair, for meeting and receiving me in the depths of darkness in ways I had not been held before. I would not have been able to do this work without you.

Thank you to Aryeh Shell who gave birth to the Herstories Project, and while working together, gifted me with an introduction to Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Journey,” which has been key in my work with survivor guilt.

Deep appreciation to Armand Volkas who opened the gates for me to process and transform post-Holocaust trauma, and fathered me into my practice as a psychologist.

Thank you to Ellen Becker, Rabbi Dev Noily and Irwin Keller for sharing their brilliance around the topic of this dissertation. Their insights are reflected throughout this work. You have contributed greatly to my own healing. Thank you to Melissa Nelson and

The Cultural Conservancy. The cultural healing work that you do with the Native

American community has deeply inspired this work. I am honored to be able to be a part of your process and learn with you.

Thank you to Joani, Eugenia, Andrea, Coco, and David for their loving friendship and support. Thank you to my kitties: Love Boy and Love Girl, for coming into my life at the perfect time when I much needed their abundant love, companionship and wisdom.

And last but most importantly, I have deep respect and much gratitude to the women that participated in this study. Their journey and courage to face the depths of pain and hold the joy of light are a great contribution. Your sharing has transformed me and will, I believe, also help others in their journey.

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... viii

CONTENTS ...... x

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Research Topic

Relationship to the Topic

Theory-In-Practice

Research Problem and Hypothesis

Methodology and Research Design

Learnings

Significance and Relevance of the Study

2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 26

Introduction and Overview

Understanding Survivor Guilt

Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma

The Experience of Descendants of Holocaust Survivors

From Survivor Guilt to Authentic Power

Conclusion

x xi

Chapter Page

3. METHODOLOGY ...... 104

Introduction and Overview

Co-Researchers

Limitations and Delimitations

Participants

Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry

4. LEARNINGS ...... 125

Introduction and Overview

Learning One: Stripping Naked

Learning Two: Facing Ereshkigal

Learning Three: The Helpers: Emergence of the Friend, in the Form of the Ancestors

Learning Four: Re-emergence through Re-joining Community: We Laughed and Cried at the Same Time

Conclusion

5. REFLECTIONS ...... 193

Significance of the Learning

Mythic and Archetypal Reflections

Implications of the Study

Recommendations for Further Study

Appendix

1. ETHICS APPLICATION ...... 223

2. CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE ...... 227

xii

Appendix Page

3. CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE ...... 229

4. INFORMED CONSENT FORM ...... 233

5. FLYER ...... 235

6. FIRST CONTACT BY PHONE SCRIPT...... 236

7. SCREENING INTERVIEW SCRIPT ...... 238

8. ACCEPTANCE PHONE CALL SCRIPT...... 240

9. REJECTION PHONE CALL SCRIPT ...... 241

10. RESEARCH MEETING DAY SCRIPT ...... 242

11. HANDOUT – REACTIONS TO “LINE REPETITIONS” ...... 248

12. POEM “THE JOURNEY” BY MARY OLIVER ...... 249

13. END OF THE DAY QUESTIONNAIRE ...... 250

14. POST-RESEARCH STUDY QUESTIONNAIRE ...... 251

15. THANK YOU LETTER TO PARTICIPANTS ...... 252

16. SUMMARY OF DATA ...... 253

17. SUMMARY OF LEARNINGS ...... 273

NOTES ...... 276

REFERENCES ...... 301

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Research Topic

The term survivor guilt was first conceptualized by William G. Niederland and

Robert Jay Lifton as a result of their treating survivors of the World War II (WWII)

Holocaust and the Hiroshima atomic bomb respectively.1 One of the effects of such traumas, according to Niederland and Lifton, is that survivors feel guilty that they survived while other family members died.2 The sudden and unjust deaths of their family and community members caused survivors to feel that they did not deserve to live and that their survival was a betrayal to parents and siblings that died. Expanding upon their thinking, Yael Danieli notes that being alive evokes in survivors constant feelings of guilt and anxiety.3

Dan Bar-On, Carol A. Kidron, Lisa MacCann, and Laurie Anne Pearlman observed that descendants of survivors also experience survivor guilt.4 The survivor guilt they experience relates to feeling that it is unfair that they are happy, given the injustice and suffering that their parents or grandparents experienced. According to Louise J.

Kaplan, there is a tendency for descendants to feel that they are not entitled to live their own lives; they tend to feel they need to take care of those who suffered either by resurrecting the dead through living the life they would have lived or by rescuing their parents.5

Other contemporary psychologists such as Arnold Modell and Joseph Weiss broadened the term survivor guilt to describe a phenomena that people feel when they compare their lives to ancestors or family members who suffered or are suffering and then feel guilty that they have a better life.6 Survivor guilt, Modell explains, can be detected through its derivatives; depression and self-negating or self-destructive behavior.7 Vicarious traumatization is another relevant concept, which Charles Figley defines as the stress resulting from wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person.8

This research study focused on the experience of third generation descendants. In this study, the terms third generation descendants, third generation, and third-generation women refer to third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors. Much has been written about intergenerational trauma and how it is passed down through the generations. The overall trans-generational effects of the Holocaust are the hallmarks for research and treatment of other historical traumas such as with children of Vietnam and

Iraq veterans, Rwandan and Bosnian families, and others. However, the topic of the third generation’s experience of historical trauma is primarily unexplored. This exploration is important because although there might be a belief that third generation members are far- removed from the traumatic events and so are not affected, as this work demonstrates, they are still very much affected in their own unique ways. Researching the particulars of how they are affected and what happens when they begin processing their experience makes this study important and necessary.

As described above, survivor guilt is a term that was first used to explain the experience of survivors of massive trauma. The term is now used to explain the experience of those who may know that either their ancestors or a living family member

3 suffered a trauma. Using this latter understanding of the term, this dissertation explored the survivor guilt of third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors pertaining to their family and cultural legacy of historical trauma. This study aimed at building understanding about processing such survivor guilt and moving from survivor guilt to authentic power.

Much has been written about the Holocaust from a historical perspective. There is also a considerable amount of research with survivors of the Holocaust as well as with the children of survivors that takes a psychological perspective. In considering this research, it is important to have a basic understanding of what trauma is. This definition draws upon Aftab Omer’s definition of trauma which states that it is “an overwhelming experience a person has that they are not able to integrate.” 9 The literature from various researchers describes how survivors of trauma tend to repress or dissociate from the overwhelming feelings related to the trauma and experience emotional numbness or frozen affect and also, conscious and unconsciously, pass trauma on to their children.

Nathan P. F. Kellerman contends that “much of the indirect influence of transgenerational transmission of trauma occurred through nonverbal, ambiguous, and guilt-inducing communication and especially through the infamous “conspiracy of silence.” 10

The term second generation used herein refers to second generation descendants of Holocaust survivors. Second generation have written extensively about their experience and how trauma was passed down to them through either silence or overexposure to their parents’ experiences. Eva Hoffman reflects, “For it was precisely the indigestibility of these utterances, their fearful weight of densely packed feeling, as much as any specific content that I took in as a child.” 11 Harvey A. Barocas and Carol B.

Barocas found that common PTSD symptomatology in second generation experience include intrusive images, nightmares, difficulty containing anger, restricted emotional rage, fear of death, and other associated symptoms such as depressive tendency and guilt over surviving the Holocaust.12 Dina Wardi observes that in every survivor family, one child is chosen as the memorial candle, an instrument for commemoration, devotion, and mourning.13 Such children carry the emotional burden the parents did not work through.

In the 1970s, second generation descendants began to form support groups in an effort to better understand their experience. By beginning to talk, they started to process their experience as well as their parents’ experience. The second generation has written seminal works about their experience and the passing on of the trauma. However, research on the experience of third generation descendants is still largely unexplored. The literature points to the fact that there is discrepancy as to how much the third generation is actually affected.

Following are some of the highlights revealed in the literature: Rachel Lev-Wiesel observes that second and third generation descendants believe that the wound of the

Holocaust would never heal and that it had to be evoked and remembered out of loyalty.14

This remembrance seemed to be a debt paid for the suffering of the first generation, and was a lesson to be learned and taught for the sake of future generations.15 Katya Cornejo notes that the third generation bears the burden of a painful historical past and also the opportunity for growth and healing.16 Julia Chaitin’s main finding is that, in Israel, digesting the Holocaust for any generation is emotionally difficult and there is a tendency to believe that one must overcome misfortune by bearing with it, instead of openly processing it.17 Chaitin found that the Holocaust is still a taboo topic. Bar-On created the

5 term partial relevance to explain his observation that third generation descendants need to understand that the Holocaust has some relevance in their lives while also understanding that the legacy cannot explain all present-day social phenomena.18

Kellerman believes that even though tertiary traumatization cannot be clearly demonstrated, third generation descendants carry a trace of the Holocaust that is mostly visible as existential angst.19

In writing about guilt among third generation, Ruth Andrew Ellenson points out the tension and difficulty Jewish women feel about deciding how much they owe to their heritage and how much should they follow their heart. 20 Rachel Kadish discusses how, as a third generation descendant, she feels pressured to have children.21 This pressure came about through such occurrences as her grandfather often telling her to have six children because the Nazis “killed one third of them so Jews need numbers.” 22

For decades now, psychotherapists and researchers have been engaging survivors as well as descendants in processing and digesting the trauma of the Holocaust. Their work is also relevant to this research. Kellerman remarks that the way to heal the transmission of trauma is through remembering properly, mourning, and working through in a safe and healing relationship.23 According to Madeleine Seifter Abrams, opening the space to talk about the feelings and history of events and issues that have been kept secret can have an immense effect on the ability of the family to move forward, reduce symptoms, and improve relationships.24

Armand Volkas uses drama therapy and expressive arts therapy as a way to help descendants give shape to their stories and process their complex feelings of grief.25

Volkas remarks that, “drama therapy and expressive arts approaches are able to contain deep wells of emotion through symbolic processes, aesthetic distance, and their capacity to work through grief.” 26 Lisa Herman argues that engaging with the images of evil and one’s own images of the Holocaust through art is a way to increase one’s capacity to work with historical trauma.27 Yaacov Naor believes that the purpose of the process is not necessarily to bring reconciliation but to help individuals find new expressions and creative ways to deal emotionally with the psychological burdens they might carry.28

Shoshana Fershtman’s dissertation explores the topic of healing intergenerational trauma through Jewish Renewal spiritual practices.29 One of her findings is that healing intergenerational trauma is possible through Jewish ritual, prayer, and ecstatic practices utilized in the Jewish renewal movement.30 Fershtman’s findings also illustrate the significance of connecting to one’s ancestors as well as to Jewish mythic imagination as healing agents.

A number of resources are important to this research as a source of relevant concepts and principles that help to bring better understanding to the phenomenon of survivor guilt among third generation descendants. Among these are Omer’s understanding that ritual is a very powerful transformative agent which is needed for the care of the soul because ritual helps in bearing difficult times, particularly the unchanging dimensions of human existence such as death, loss, illness, aging, danger, betrayal, abandonment, and cruelty.31 Victor Turner proposes that communitas is the field that is created when powerful ritual happens.32 A group of people who are gathered may experience communitas when they are connected to each other and something powerful happens in the space.33

This study brought together a group of women third generation descendants of the

Holocaust to explore how they are affected and how through ritual, drama therapy, expressive arts therapy, and cultural relevant practices they might process and transform their experiences.

This dissertation uses the term Holocaust instead of the term Shoah to describe the Nazi project to exterminate all Jews during WWII. According to Vivian Patraka, “The entire array of cultural, social, and political forces that amassed to effect genocide may be historically embedded in the term Holocaust.” 34 However, it is important to note that the use of the term Holocaust is controversial because of its original meaning. Patraka explains that the word Holocaust derives from:

… the Greek word for “whole-burnt” and perhaps it has been used to describe the manner in which Jews of Europe died. Yet the problem with this term is noted by Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi who points out that the notion of “burnt offering” raises problems through the sacrificial connotation that it attaches to the death of the Jews of Europe which is consistent with a prevailing Christian reading of Jewish history.35

On the other hand, Shoah, the Hebrew word that means “widespread, even cosmic disaster” does not associate victims with ritual sacrifice. Yet, Patraka points out that the word Holocaust has become the term of choice because of its function as a stable, recognizable, historical referent.36 Because of this, I use the term Holocaust in this study.

Relationship to the Topic

It was my therapist who first introduced me to the concept of survivor guilt. After having worked with her for several years and hearing a lot about my relationship to the

Holocaust and family members, she finally offered me this concept. It was liberating to finally have a way to explain what I felt that I could trace back to my family as well as my cultural upbringing. This concept helped me see how I have stopped myself from enjoying and claiming my right to live and be happy because I knew that others had suffered or were suffering more than me. It helped to partially explain why I felt depressed and sabotaged myself.

The legacy of the Holocaust was part of my upbringing in a small post-Holocaust conservative Jewish community in Colombia. Leaving family behind, all of my grandparents immigrated to Colombia from Eastern Europe before and around WWII. I grew up with close contact to all four of my grandparents. Even though nobody talked about what it was like to leave their lives behind and how the Holocaust might have impacted them directly, I could sense my maternal grandmother’s depression. My father’s mother, mi abuelita Sonia, is the one grandparent that we know of who had family killed during WWII. She fled Lithuania right before the war to meet her brothers who were already in Colombia. Her parents and sister stayed behind and were killed in mass graves during the war. Yet, I never heard my grandmother talk about them and in fact, I do not remember any of my grandparents talking about what their lives were prior to moving to Colombia. They focused more on being in the present and helping their family members still in Eastern Europe, when possible.

Even though I did not hear direct stories about the Holocaust in my family, I do remember hearing through my Jewish school and community that our task as Jews was to remember and to never forget what happened because otherwise it would happen again.

My mother also conveyed the message to me that I could not trust anybody except my family. We were not supposed to let anyone into the community that was not Jewish and we were not supposed to leave the community. Our main purpose, especially for young women like myself, was to marry someone from the tribe and procreate. I was not supposed to marry out of love but instead out of loyalty to the tribe and to my parents as I was expected to stay near them and take care of them and my family. Instead of following these expectations when I was 19 years old I left my community and Colombia and moved to the United States. I left my Jewish community and Judaism as a teenager because at that point in my development I experienced it as oppressive. While men were the scholars and had access to the religion as a woman I was supposed to take care of home. I also knew that part of my healing was being able to connect with others that were not Jewish. I wanted to belong to the larger community and not only the Jewish community. It was harder to do that in Colombia so I moved to the United States where I have been freer to pursue and develop other parts of myself.

When I was 17 years old, around the time when I was supposed to be dating older

Jewish men from the community, I decided to join the “March of the Living.” This trip to

Poland and Israel included visits to concentration camps and teaching about Jewish life in

Eastern Europe before the Holocaust happened. For the March, Jewish 10th graders from all over the world came together for two weeks to tour the various sites and spend time together learning about Holocaust history. Holocaust survivors even traveled with us.

I was incredibly moved by this experience and went back home to recruit a group of youth that would go on the March two years later. I organized the first Colombian group to join the March and my cousin, whose father survived Auschwitz, came with us.

My uncle, who lost most of his family, had never talked about his experiences as a teenager in the concentration camp. It was the night before we left that he sat my cousin down and began to speak. Although he pleaded with my cousin not to go, it was also a significant night as it was the beginning of his sharing his story with his family and the world. A few years later he went back to his hometown for the first time since he was taken away.

I came back from that second trip incredibly affected. I had nobody to talk to about what I had just experienced in leading a group and being responsible for 20 other youth and their experiences. All these years later, I finally had an opportunity to begin processing the legacy of trauma. I was already living in the Bay Area when I joined the

“Herstories Project.” Thirteen diverse women came together to engage in a collaborative process of ancestral research, community building, and storytelling through performance.

One of the main questions we focused on was what we wanted to heal and transform from our ancestral legacies and what we wanted to preserve and pass on. It was a space to process and express how the legacy of the Holocaust affected me, including my struggle with survivor guilt, though I did not yet have the word for it. Through oral history and research, I learned stories I did not know before. These stories in part informed the theater piece I presented to the public.

I interviewed my father and his sister. My father shared with me that his earliest memory was of my grandmother opening a letter and letting out a very loud painful

11 scream. In the letter she was told that her family had been murdered. I remember my grandmother as a joyous, positive person. I never saw her sad or depressed. She was always smiling. Even to this day, my father proudly talks of how she is a model to us because she did not look back but kept moving forward.

My aunt told me another little-shared story similar to my father’s experience, which she said impacted her very much. My aunt described for me that when my grandmother got sick and was about to die she finally let go and allowed herself to feel the grief she had not expressed before. My aunt witnessed this transformation in my grandmother and says she had never seen her mother express grief in such intense way. I commented that she probably was not only grieving her own death but finally allowed herself to grieve the murder of her family.

During this time of research for Herstories I also learned of a significant and meaningful fact. When I was born, I was named after my grandmother’s younger sister,

Liuba, for my Hebrew name. In Judaism, newborns are named after deceased relatives as a way to honor those ancestors. Furthermore, by giving a baby the name of a relative, the baby is also given the essence of that person’s soul. This naming is a way to recognize the child’s membership in the covenant.

Liuba was one of the family members who was murdered. Her name in Russian, means “loving and giving.” It is interesting but probably not a coincidence that I was to become the sunshine girl, the emotional caretaker for my family, as well as the one to carry the story of the Holocaust and seek healing in relation to it. Unconsciously, my family gave me this role. Despite this task, the message I received in my family was that to be depressed and sensitive is bad; I have been judged for being both. I have the

12 capacity to hold pain and suffering and taboo emotions. Family members want me to be able to do so but at the same time I felt bad and guilty that I would go to those places. I did not have anyone to hold me or mirror me in my experience. I was busy doing that for others so I could not give that to myself.

In the Herstories piece that I performed, I had a conversation with my grandmother. I asked her whether my existence fully depended on her and my other ancestors. I answered my own question by saying that no, I deserved to exist, no matter what. Her response was, “Oy Vei, Nicolita has turned Californian!” I then went on to portray my conflict with the adult women in my community who wanted me to marry a

Jewish man and the fact that I wanted to do something different, that I wanted to do what made me happy. In the theater piece, my relatives accused me of betraying them and betraying the tribe, saying that as women they had sacrificed and that I must sacrifice, too. I pushed them away with my drum. As I started drumming, my grandmother’s sister,

Liuba, whose story I had told at the beginning of the piece, came out and joined me with her flute. We played together and I felt her support. Just like she was happy playing her flute, she wanted me to be happy doing what I wanted to do. We were happy playing music together. This was the first time that I connected with the idea that I can ask the ancestors for their support. I felt that there is at least one ancestor that I can connect with.

Connecting with them makes me feel at peace and happy with myself.

There was never a space with others of my generation to process how Holocaust legacy affected us. We received lots of messages, spoken and unspoken, about how we are supposed to carry it but there was no space to process all of it. Is it okay to feel and work through the fear, the rage, and the grief, and what about the guilt and the shame?

Yet, soon after the Herstories project was over, I came across a flyer for a drama therapy workshop with other descendants of the Holocaust. It was this workshop with

Armand Volkas that opened the possibility of therapeutically processing post-Holocaust trauma. Survivors as well as descendants came together. I felt terribly conflicted and afraid. Did I have anything to work through around the Holocaust? Why pay more attention to this topic when it has been overly talked about and what about other genocides? Do we still hold Holocaust trauma? I felt guilty for taking the attention and admitting that there was something I needed to work through. I felt guilty that I had a space to do this kind of work. Did I deserve it? I realize now that in part I also felt survivor guilt. Do I deserve and have permission to heal from this legacy? The message that I received in my family was that I needed to carry it and there was nothing to do about it. Just hold the unspoken affects and the depression.

Four years after Herstories and after my first workshop with Armand, as I embarked on the journey of this dissertation process, I realized that what I was working through in my story and am still working through is, in part, survivor guilt. Do I have the right to live the life that I want and be happy? Or do I have to carry the trauma of my ancestors, be loyal, and sacrifice? Can I hold the grief and anger, and the joy? What do I do with my guilt and my shame? Can I honor and transform my history? These questions have carried me through the journey of this dissertation.

Theory-In-Practice

While Omer’s Imaginal Transformation Praxis (ITP), does not specifically address survivor guilt, it does provide a useful context for considering this topic. Thus,

ITP is the theory-in-practice that was used in this study to interpret and make meaning of participants’ experiences. Omer has defined trauma as an overwhelming experience that a person has which they are not able to integrate.37

In response, and as a way to cope with trauma, a person develops an adaptive identity which Omer describes as follows:

In the course of coping with environmental impingement, as well as overwhelming events, the developing soul constellates self images associated with adaptive patterns of reactivity. These self images persist as an adaptive identity into subsequent contexts where they are maladaptive and barriers to the unfolding of Being.38

Adaptive identity is maintained in part through gatekeeping dynamics that may be personified as gatekeepers; these forces protect and enforce adaptive identity and keep us from experience.39 According to Omer: “Gatekeeping refers to the individual and collective dynamics that resist and restrict experience. The term gatekeepers refers to the personification of these dynamics.” 40 Also influencing adaptive identity are imaginal structures, which Omer defines as:

assemblies of sensory, affective, and cognitive aspects of experience constellated into images; they both mediate and constitute experience. The specifics of an imaginal structure are determined by an interaction of personal, cultural, and archetypal influences. These influences may be teased apart by attending to the stories that form personal character and the myths that shape cultural life. During the individuation process, imaginal structures are transmuted into emergent and enhanced capacities as well as a transformed identity. Any enduring and substantive change in individual or group behavior requires a transmuting of imaginal structures. This transmutation depends upon an affirmative turn toward the passionate nature of the soul.41

According to Donald Kalsched the psyche responds inwardly to trauma through what he calls the self-care system which entails the persecutor-protector figure, a parallel concept to the gatekeeper.42 When an infant experiences an overwhelming event that causes the child to have unbearable psychic pain and anxiety, in order to avoid a total annihilation of the human personality and personal spirit they create a second line of defenses to prevent the “unthinkable” from happening. A fragmentation of consciousness occurs and the different pieces organize themselves into patters such as dyads made up of personified “beings.” One part of the ego regresses to the infantile period and another part progresses. The progressed part grows up too fast, often as the “false self” and it is this part of the personality that then caretakes the regressed part.43 Once the trauma defense is organized, all relations with the other world are “screened” by the self-care system. What was intended to be a defense against further trauma becomes a major resistance to all unguarded spontaneous expressions of self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively.44

The persecutor-protector primitive defense does not learn anything about realistic danger as the child grows up. It functions on the magical level of consciousness with the same level of awareness it had when the original trauma or traumas occurred. Each new life opportunity is mistakenly seen as a dangerous threat of re-traumatization and is therefore attacked.45 According to Kellerman, trauma can be passed down through generations in a process known as intergenerational transmission of trauma.46 According to Modell and Aaron R. Denham, survivor guilt is one way of coping with trauma and intergenerational trauma.47 Omer states: “In ITP guilt is considered to be a compound emotion (not an affect) constituted by the affects of fear, grief, anger and shame. ITP

16 emphasizes guilt structures far more than guilt as an emotion, so as to highlight the cognitive, somatic, cultural and archetypal aspects of guilt.” 48

It could be inferred from the information mentioned above that a person with survivor guilt has imaginal structures and gatekeepers related to their experience and responses to surviving both their own personal traumas as well as the traumas of their families and ancestors. In turn, such dynamics might be passed along intergenerationally within families. Omer’s term cultural gatekeepers describes a collective dynamic in response to trauma.49 Omer defines disidentification as: “A key dimension in the transformation of identity associated with the emergence of a spacious awareness free from frozen images of the self.” 50 It could be said that by becoming aware of the imaginal structures as well as the personal and cultural gatekeepers that are related to survivor guilt, a person can then disidentify from survivor guilt. By working with trauma, individuals can be liberated from frozen self-images, thus expanding their repertoire of ways of being. For as Omer says, “one of the deepest passions/needs of the soul is for other experience, new experience.” 51 Omer defines the concept of the Friend as “those deep potentials of the soul which guide us to act with passionate objectivity and encourage us to align with the creative will of the cosmos.” 52

The Friend can be key in helping a person disidentify from survivor guilt. In the process of working with the affective experiences related to survivor guilt and being met by the Friend, who may be external or internal, a person can step into what Omer describes as Authentic Power: “Authentic Power (or Soul Power or the Power of Being) refers to the spectrum of human capacities and qualities that are responsive to various domains of life experience in ways that engender truth, beauty, and justice. Authentic

Power emerges through enduring and transmuting the vulnerabilities we experience when we turn towards the sensitivities that embody the soul's passionate nature.” 53

Research Problem and Hypothesis

This study’s Research Problem was as follows: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The research hypothesis was: As affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power.

Methodology and Research Design

This qualitative research study was conducted within the framework of the participatory research paradigm. The methodological approach used was Imaginal

Inquiry, a research methodology developed my Omer, which includes four phases: evoking experience, expressing experience, interpreting experience, and integrating experience.54

This study aimed to provide an opportunity for third generation descendants to feel the affects that had not been consciously named and directly expressed in their families. The creation of a group with a similar history and providing the opportunity for ritualization of space allowed for those affects to arise. Another aim of this study was to identify and work with unique messages that third generation descendants received related to this historical trauma. The study aimed at looking at the messages, especially those that would evoke guilt. The sense of community and safety, as well as the presence

18 of the Friend, allowed for processing the affects as well as the messages and imaginal structures. This processing in turn opened the possibility for movement from survivor guilt to authentic power.

The initial activity that participants engaged in was a ritual in which they shared objects and stories of their own and their family’s Holocaust trauma. The sharing of the stories took the participants deep into affective states. Participants were moved to tears when telling their stories and hearing each other. Following the telling of the stories, the researcher invited participants to share how they were affected and to follow their feelings, including any images that they noticed. Imaginal Inquiry works with the emergent, the researcher follows whatever comes up in the process instead of suppressing it or ignoring it. This practice of following what emerges in the present in addition to the sense of community, palpable from the very beginning, allowed participants to notice and explore deep feelings and thoughts in ways that they reported they had not done before.

Participants used many spontaneous ways of following what was coming up in the moment including their experiences of grief, rage, and joy, through embodied expression as well as dancing, and singing.

After lunch, I invited participants to listen to me recite Mary Oliver’s poem, “The

Journey.” The goal of this activity was to evoke feelings of survivor guilt. Given the strong reactions to this poem from some of the participants, I deviated in my research design and decided to work with one of the participants who was highly affected. I created a psychodrama in which the participant imagined she was talking directly to her diseased grandmother. In the psychodrama the participant dealt directly with feelings of guilt and shame. The voice of the gatekeeper was teased out and it became apparent that

19 the internalized voice was an aspect of the ancestor making the participant feel guilty. To her surprise, the grandmother also spoke as the Friend. This psychodrama opened a conversation among participants about the various messages they had received related to the Holocaust, including the impact upon gender and Jewish identity. One of the last activities participants engaged in was a ritual in which they each sent a message to their ancestors and future generations. This ritual allowed participants to enter into authentic power as they were able to transmute the guilt and trauma and speak their own empowered and unique voices. The participants wished for themselves, the future generations, and also their ancestors to be free from survivor guilt and the burden of the trauma, and to have permission to transform and live a good open life without remaining captive to the effects of the trauma. At the close of the day together, participants wanted to end with a song. Led by one of the participants, we sang the Jewish song, El Na Refa

Na La, which means “please heal this one,” as we held each other and gave appreciations.

Before the day ended, I asked participants to journal about their most powerful moment of the day and the meaning they made of that moment. As participants answered journal questions, they expressed how they were affected, identified their key moments, and shared what surprised them. The group was videotaped throughout the data gathering and I transcribed the data and paid particular attention to the deeper meaning of the stories, the affective experiences, and the group sharing. Reflecting upon all the data materials, there emerged meanings about what happened and how the participants, researcher, and co-researcher were affected. Since validity is established in the participatory paradigm by accounting for all aspects of the intersubjective field, I met

20 with my co-researchers so that we could together explore our own imaginal structures that may have affected our ability to account for the experiences that occurred.

My interpretive lens was based in ITP as well as literature related to intergenerational trauma, post-Holocaust trauma among second and third generation descendants, general psychological literature on survivor guilt, and the role that ritual, drama therapy and the expressive arts can have in helping heal from individual and collective trauma. The story of the participants’ journey was contextualized in myths including the descent of Inanna, the myth of Lilith and Miriam, and the Jewish concept of

Tikkun Olam.

As part of the integrating experience phase, I will mail my final Summary of

Learnings to participants which may help them assimilate their experience of being in the study. I plan to disseminate the Learnings to interested communities by writing an article that can be published in relevant publications as well as through presentations, drama therapy workshops and a ritual performance based on the research.

Learnings

This research study led to the cumulative learning, entitled “Diving Deep and

Emerging with New Possibilities,” which states as follows: When third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered to explore and give voice to their experience, they processed the conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the family and broader community, and communitas was created which brought healing about these experiences. Third-generation women descendants may be expected to marry, have children, and carry on Jewish tradition, as well as to be the carriers of the

21 trauma instead of recovering from it and be the lineage bearers. Recovering from post-

Holocaust trauma includes processing these pressures so third generation members need not act from guilt but instead from an empowered place. Third-generation women descendants are in a position to digest and recover from the Holocaust when given the opportunity to do so, and communitas can support this process.

This Cumulative Learning is based upon four major Learnings. Those Learnings are as follows: The first learning, entitled “Stripping Naked,” states as follows: When the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors, gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their personal and family Holocaust stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Meeting with other third generation descendants gave participants a sense of safety to open up and meet shadow aspects that they had not explored before. Sharing similar histories provided a sense of community that participants needed to feel to be able to face and process their experience.

The second Learning, entitled “Facing Ereshkigal,” states as follows: With the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair and guilt.

This study revealed that, in fact, third generation descendants are very much affected by the Holocaust. When given the opportunity and the safety to face unknown aspects of their experience, third generation descendants expressed deep grief, rage, fear, guilt, and shame.

The study revealed that when third generation descendants face these voices, they are actually internalized critical voices and that the ancestors on the contrary are their allies instead of their saboteurs. Connecting with the ancestors and asking for their support can help third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors heal and transform.

The fourth Learning is entitled “Re-emergence through Re-joining Community:

We Laughed and Cried at the Same Time,” and states as follows: When third generation descendants explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women. Participants connected to practices that the ancestors have done in the past to help them hold grief and joy. These practices helped participants feel a sense of community that they needed in order to be able to let go, to feel and express and integrate what they were experiencing.

Feeling a sense of community, connection, and belonging to a Jewish community and to the larger community and world is crucial to being able to recover from a sense of brokenness and exile.

Significance and Relevance of the Topic

There is a belief among third generation descendants that it is not appropriate to focus on the Holocaust because there are other genocides that have happened more recently that deserve attention and too much focus has been given to the Holocaust in the media and such. However, third generation descendants have been unable to effectively process their experience, partly because they have received messages that they are not affected, that they should move forward instead of look back or they think they are not affected. They have also received the message that they must carry the trauma instead of transform it. The message has been to remember and carry the experience so that the

Holocaust does not happen again. What if the message is to process the trauma so that we do not perpetrate oppression against others and ourselves? Descendants of survivors may also feel guilt for processing and transforming post-Holocaust trauma because that may mean that they are moving on and leaving their ancestors behind.

Such messages that have been passed down to third generation descendants constellate into patterns of thought, behavior, and being which affect the choices they make as well as how they experience the world. Yet, there has not been that many spaces for third generation descendants to come together as an identified group to share their experiences, tease out the messages that have affected them, and express the various known and unknown feelings they have regarding the roles and expectations put upon them. Coming together with other third generation descendants, and in this case in particular with only women, can create the potential for such descendants to find power in ways they had not felt before. Power, in this case, may mean being able to be with one’s experience and process it so as to be able to be more fully human. Being more fully

24 human may include embracing feelings and even being able to deeply express profound grief and rage and survive, instead of living a smaller life limited by fear and guilt. Power for third-generation women descendants may also include standing up against oppression, their own oppression, the oppression of others as well as the feeling of victimhood that the Holocaust represents.

Immediate survivors of the Holocaust were considerably challenged in the process of trying to metabolize the trauma that they experienced because of the overwhelming nature of their experience. The second generation members have tended to carry the trauma for them. Because there is a titration of the trauma, the third generation is in a position to face the Holocaust in such a way that they can more easily face it, digest it, not be hostage to it, but instead find that in this work they may be empowered and find the capacity to hold deep, scary affect and survive. In doing so, they may heal themselves as well as the ancestors. Healing, in this dissertation, refers to being able to face the trauma, including making conscious the limiting patterns of thought, behavior, and being as well as the affects and feelings, such as grief, anger, despair, guilt, and shame that may be related to their experiences. By accessing such expression, they may metabolize and integrate their traumatic and limiting experiences. Healing and empowerment also involves being able to use ritual, ecstatic and culturally relevant practices, and the ancestors as resources to help hold and integrate experiences as well as celebrate survival and full living. Ritual and ecstatic practices can help free repressed and frozen affect so that they may be expressed. This study engaged third generation descendants in a unique way that other studies have not done before. Through the use of drama therapy, expressive arts, ritual, ecstatic practices, connection to feminine archetypes, and co-

25 creation of communitas, this study researched how third generation descendants might move towards transforming intergenerational trauma.

This work is relevant and significant because there are many cultures that have experienced historical trauma and there are many peoples still carrying the trauma. Such burden is preventing us from moving forward and connecting with the other which ultimately can help stop the genocides and killings that we continue to perpetrate.

Dealing with historical trauma and survivor guilt can help individuals and groups reach out to the other cultures to do the inter-cultural healing that is needed instead of perpetrating violence and hatred. This work is needed to help manifest the evolution of humanity.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction and Overview

This study focused on the following Research Problem: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The hypothesis was as follows: As affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to, one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power. This research study intended to explore the ways that third generation descendants might experience survivor guilt and how they may begin disidentifying from survivor guilt if given the opportunity to come together to process their affective states and imaginal structures related to intergenerational trauma.

In order to provide a fuller understanding of the topic of survivor guilt, included here is an overview of the concept of survivor guilt as well as presentation of the phenomena of intergenerational trauma, including the possible affects and imaginal structures that descendants of historical trauma may experience. Also presented are theories on the power of ritualization and transformation. Discussion includes consideration of the use of ecstatic cultural transformative practices that help hold deep affect and assist in transgression of personal experience as well as the role of connection to divine feminine power to assist in freeing expression of repressed and frozen affect as well as the possibility to tap into authentic power. These areas of study are divided into

27 the following four sections of the Literature Review. The first section is entitled,

“Understanding Survivor Guilt.” The second is, “Intergenerational Transmission of

Trauma.” The third section is, “The Experience of Descendants of Holocaust Survivors,” and the last section is entitled, “From Survivor Guilt to Authentic Power.”

The first section provides an overview of the concept of survivor guilt and how it has evolved over time. After the Holocaust as well as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs the concept came into use to explain the guilt that survivors experienced for surviving while others died. The concept has evolved and is currently used to describe the guilt that people may feel when there is a living family member or an ancestor that suffers or suffered. Early and also contemporary psychologists and researchers on the topic explain that survivor guilt can be detected through its derivatives: depression and self-sabotage.

The next section, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma,” explores how personal or collective traumatic experience is passed down through the generations.

Resources of this section are important to the topic and the research problem because they explain the mechanisms by which trauma is passed down through the generations and how descendants may experience survivor guilt. This section explores ways that people who experience trauma struggle with integrating the experiences and what adaptations and dynamics result from such struggle. Included here is discussion of ways that survivors of trauma tend to repress or dissociate from the overwhelming feelings related to the trauma and experience emotional numbness or frozen affect. At conscious and unconscious levels, they pass trauma on to their children. This section presents

Omer’s concept of the Friend as a resource for survivors and descendants to use to work through trauma.

The third section of this Literature Review, “The Experience of Descendants of

Holocaust Survivors,” covers research studies and literature that explain how the

Holocaust has impacted the second and third generation. Representatives of the second generation have written considerably about their experience. Trauma was passed down to them through either silence or over-exposure to their parents’ experiences. They held the trauma for their parents and began talking about it. This section also explores some of the experiences of the third generation in work with the legacy of trauma. While there is less research and focus on third generation survivors, this section considers some research done by and with this generation. The resources make note of a debate as to how much and in what ways the third generation carries post-Holocaust trauma. This question regarding third generation experience is relevant to the research problem which focuses upon the impact of the Holocaust on that generation. For purposes of this research study, it is assumed that third generation descendants tend to experience survivor guilt. The section also covers a small but growing body of writings by descendants on guilt and survivor guilt, including how some are grappling with these issues.

The final section of the Literature Review, “From Survivor Guilt to Authentic

Power,” explores the concept of authentic power from the point of view of psychologists and spiritual teachers. Resources focus on theories that tackle how ritualizing experience can help people uncover and express parts of their experiences in new ways that can help transform painful experience such as trauma. Also included is thinking from psychotherapists, educators, and artists who have been working with post-Holocaust

29 trauma, particularly with descendants, using drama therapy and expressive practices. This section also includes resources about the significance and power of the divine feminine and feminine archetypes in Judaism.

Understanding Survivor Guilt

This first section of the Literature Review explores the concept of survivor guilt.

This exploration considers the historical emergence of the concept as well as the development of theoretical descriptions of the phenomenon. Most notably, sources include early theorists Niederland, Lifton, and Modell as well as more contemporary theorists such as Weiss and O’Connor. Niederland used the term to explain symptoms of depression that survivors of the Holocaust were having due to survivor guilt. Modell,

Weiss, and O’Connor broadened understanding of the concept so that it is currently used to explain the guilt that people feel for having better lives than other family members or ancestors that are suffering or have suffered. Since the historical emergence of this concept is linked in part to the traumatic experiences of Jews during the Holocaust, some of the sources specifically refer to Jewish experience. As it is important to a comprehensive understanding of survivor guilt, this section also includes a basic discussion of guilt.

Survivor guilt as a theoretical-therapeutic concept became popular in the United

States after World War II. Niederland incorporates the concept of survivor guilt as part of the wider concept of survivor syndrome.1 In discussing survivor guilt, Niederland explains that survivors unconsciously feel their survival is a betrayal to their parents and siblings that died in the Holocaust. Being alive evokes constant feelings of guilt and

30 anxiety causing them to feel that they do not deserve to be alive.2 Niederland notes that survivors often identify with the dead to the point that they look like walking corpses themselves. According to Niederland, these constant feelings of guilt cause mental distress that clinically manifests in two ways: 1) feelings of depression, inner misery, and pain; and/or 2) feelings of being persecuted, attacked, and hated.3

During the twentieth century, several authors expanded upon Niederland’s work.

Bruno Bettelheim and Elie Wiesel wrote about how Holocaust survivors feel guilty because they were not the chosen ones to die.4 Lifton is another important contributor to the concept and thinking about issues of the survivor. In studying the Hibakusha, the

Japanese term for the victims that survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, Lifton developed the concept of guilt over survival priority, as he prefers to name the phenomenon of survivor guilt, as well as the concepts of death guilt and identification guilt.5 Lifton suggests that unresolved, incomplete mourning results in stasis and entrapment in the traumatic process.6

Lifton further comments that if survivors feel guilty they do so because of their identification with the dead.7 Survivors feel as if they are being stared at by the dead and accused of wrongdoing; they feel shame for what they perceive to be their selfish efforts to survive. Lifton writes that concentration camp survivors tend to close off emotionally and when survivors remain so constricted in the long term, there is a symbolic psychic death.8 Lifton believes that that survivor guilt is experienced by the whole society.9

Related to survivor guilt is the condition identified as Postraumatic Stress

Disorder (PTSD). According to Bessel A. van der Kolk, PTSD occurs when a person exposed to trauma continues to experience its effects in a constellation of symptoms.10

Symptoms include recurrent memories of trauma, avoidance of situations and circumstances that reminds one of the trauma, and emotional numbing, as well as hypervigilance, and a tendency to overreact to ordinary events as though they were traumatic.11

Tom Williams, believes that it is important for the survivor of a trauma to separate out elements of their experience such as affective and cognitive aspects, so that for example, the survivor might learn that it is okay to be sad about someone having died in a traumatic situation, but that it is not appropriate to feel total responsibility for that person’s death.12 If a person that survives the war has a friend who died in the war, the survivor needs to understand they did not kill their friend, but it was the enemy and ultimately those responsible for the war itself.

Also speaking to complicated experience related to loss, several authors describe how survivors remain in continuous relationship with the dead through their ongoing grief and mourning.13 Survivors of trauma such as the Holocaust commonly feel that they were not able to ritualize the dead at the time of their passing which adds to the feeling that the dead are not at peace. The survivors, then, with their unresolved grief are also not at peace.

Danieli argues that survivors are afraid and feel guilty of mourning their dead because to do so means leaving the dead behind and colluding with the goals of the Nazis to obliterate them.14 To address these feelings therapeutically, Danieli points out that the phase of integration is an important point at which survivors and family members dealing with survivor guilt may be supported to develop a more realistic perspective of what happened, by whom, to whom, and accept that what happened was not under their

32 control.15 Danieli also notes that creating a sense of belonging to family and community is another way to counteract the psychological aloneness.

Modell borrowed the concept from Niederland and expanded its meaning and definition. Modell believes that this particular sense of guilt is accompanied by an unconscious thought that one has obtained something good at the expense of taking something away from someone else.16 Noting that the sense of guilt may be noticed only through its derivatives, Model observes that guilt might manifest as self-sabotage and self-negating or self-destructive behavior.

Modell discusses the fact that survivor guilt finds root in a belief that there is not enough love or goodness for everyone in the nuclear family.17 From this point of view, if someone has something good they assume that it is at the expense of someone not having it, as if there is a limited amount of goodness to be had. Modell argues that this belief comes from the early history of humankind when there was limited supply of food; in such times prohibitions against taking more than a modes share served the survival needs of the group. Modell writes, “If fate has dealt harshly with other members of the family, the survivor may experience guilt, as he has obtained more than his share of the

‘good.’” 18

Modell and recent psychologists researching and writing on survivor guilt use the definition of guilt conceptualized my Michael Friedman, that guilt is “the appraisal, conscious or unconscious, of one’s plans, thoughts, actions, etc. as damaging, through commission or omission, to someone for whom one feels responsible.” 19 According to this definition, a person might believe they have harmed someone, which then contributes to their guilt even though in reality, they did not cause the harm they imagine. Friedman

33 says, “In fact, it is a person’s inaccurate and irrational beliefs about the harmful consequences of his plans, thoughts and actions which are of greatest importance to a clinical theory of guilt.” 20

Weiss, O’Connor, and Jack W. Berry write about the relationship between survivor guilt and psychopathology.21 O’Connor et al. define survivor/outdoing guilt as,

“characterized by the pathogenic belief that by pursuing normal goals and achieving success and happiness, one will cause others to suffer simply by comparison.” 22 The authors explain that survivor guilt was first used to describe the guilt that survivors may feel when literally surviving the death of another.23 These authors advocate for an expanded understanding of the term to include other populations and conceptualize survivor guilt as “guilt about the advantage a person believes they have when compared with others, such as success, superior abilities, or a greater degree of health and well being.” 24 The authors believe that people that are suffering from guilt tend to inhibit themselves, put themselves down, and punish themselves.25 Through their studies the authors demonstrate that guilt-prone people tend to put others ahead of themselves by holding themselves down in a variety of ways such as feeling depressed, somaticizing, and enacting obsessive thinking, compulsive behavior, frightening thoughts common to phobic conditions, and hostility.26

Understanding survivor guilt will be enhanced by consideration of some thoughts from Affect Theory. An important contributor to that theory is Donald L. Nathanson who has contributed foundational research on affect.27 He identifies nine innate affects, which are understood as distinct biological responses to specific patterns of stimulation.28

Nathanson groups the affects into three categories: pleasant or positive, neutral, and

34 unpleasant or negative.29 The positive affects are interest-excitement and enjoyment-joy; the neutral affect is surprise-startle; and the negative affects are fear-terror, distress- anguish, anger-rage, dismell, disgust and shame-humiliation. Drawing upon such an understanding of the affects is another source important to this study on survivor guilt, even though not specifically discussing survivor guilt. Within his Imaginal

Transformation Praxis, Omer explains that guilt is “considered to be a compound emotion (not an affect) constituted by the affects of fear, grief, anger and shame.” 30

Survivor guilt refers to a phenomenon that people experience due to surviving a trauma while others did not survive. It can also refer to the experience of those having a better life than other family members or ancestors. Survivor guilt can be perceived through its derivatives such as depression and self-sabotage. People with survivor guilt may feel a sense of loyalty and responsibility for those who have suffered or are suffering greatly in the present. Those with survivor guilt then have a hard time separating from family members or ancestors in order that they might have a life of their own. Such persons are afraid of healing and surpassing their loved ones and feel that to do so means they would be harming their predecessors. The material in this section relates to the research topic because it explains how being identified with survivor guilt can prevent a person from fully owning their life, being in their power and individuating from family members. Gaps in the literature point to the need to learn and identify what imaginal structures and affective experiences descendants have in relation to survivor guilt and what processes are needed so they can transform survivor guilt.

Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma

Resources presented in this section provide important information about the far reaches of historical trauma. Judith Lewis Herman is a notable source for a basic understanding of trauma while Figley provides useful theory about secondary trauma stress. Kellerman provides crucial thinking about intergenerational transmission of trauma and emotional numbness. This section also includes Danieli’s thoughts on silence and its relationship to dissociation or repression and McCann and Pearlman’s observations about the ways that historical trauma affects later generations. Also helpful to understanding intergenerational trauma are Omer’s concepts of gatekeeper and Friend and his theory about trauma and adaptive identity.

In order to discuss intergenerational trauma, it is important to begin with an understanding of trauma. Like Herman, many cite the definition that the Comprehensive

Textbook of Psychiatry gives to psychological trauma as a “feeling of intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.” 31 Similarly, Omer defines trauma as “an overwhelming experience a person has that they are not able to integrate.” 32 Omer states that people develop an adaptive identity in part as a result of trauma. He describes adaptive identity as follows: “In the course of coping with environmental impingement, as well as overwhelming events, then developing soul constellates self images associated with adaptive patterns of reactivity. These self images persist as an adaptive identity into subsequent contexts where they are maladaptive and barriers to the unfolding of being.” 33 Omer also explains that adaptive identity is held in place in part through gatekeeping, which is his term for those “individual and collective dynamics that resist and restrict experience.” 34 Omer identifies the personification of

36 these dynamics as gatekeepers which can also be understood as critical voices. Omer observes that gatekeepers are largely mental mechanisms that are part of the adaptive personality.35 In turn, such dynamics might be passed along intergenerationally within families. Omer’s term, cultural gatekeepers, describes a collective dynamic in response to trauma.36 Personal and cultural gatekeepers keep the person within certain approved ways of being, observing social and cultural taboos. Taboos vary from group to group, culture to culture.37 An additional concept from Omer that will be useful in this chapter is that of the Friend which “refers to those deep potentials of the soul which guide us to act with passionate objectivity and encourage us to align with the creative will of the cosmos.” 38

A parallel concept to Omer’s gatekeeper is Kalsched’s figure of the persecutor- protector.39 According to Kalsched, trauma is an overwhelming life event that causes the child unbearable psychic pain or anxiety; to experience such anxiety threatens the total annihilation of the human personality, the destruction of the personal spirit.40 To avoid this, the infant, who does not yet have a coherent ego and its defenses formed, creates a second line of defenses to prevent the “unthinkable” from being experienced.

Kalsched’s work focuses on the secondary defenses and their elaboration in unconscious fantasy.41 He notes that dreams as well as recent clinical research reveal that when trauma strikes the developing psyche of a child, a fragmentation of consciousness occurs and the different pieces organize themselves into patterns such as dyads made up of personified “beings.” 42 One part of the ego regresses to the infantile period and another part progresses. The progressed part grows up too fast, often as the “false self,” and it is this part of the personality that then caretakes the regressed part.43

The regressed part of the personality is usually represented as a vulnerable, young, innocent child or animal-self that remains shamefully hidden. The progressed part of the personality is represented in dreams by a powerful benevolent or malevolent great being who protects or persecutes its vulnerable partner, sometimes keeping it imprisoned within.44

The images of the progressed versus regressed parts of the self make up what

Kalsched calls the psyche’s archetypal self-care system.45 He refers to these defenses as defenses of the Self because he believes that they are coordinated by a deeper center in the personality than the ego. Once the trauma defense is organized, all relations with the other world are “screened” by the self-care system. He notes that what was intended to be a defense against further trauma becomes a major resistance to all unguarded spontaneous expressions of self in the world. The person survives but cannot live creatively.46

Kalsched explains that this self-care system functions as a kind of inner “Jewish

Defense League” (whose slogan, after the Holocaust, reads “Never Again!”). He writes:

“Never Again,” says our tyrannical caretaker, “will the traumatized personal spirit of this child suffer this badly! Never again will it be this helpless in the face of cruel reality… before this happens I will disperse it into fragments (dissociation), or encapsulate it and soothe it with fantasy (schizoid withdrawal), or numb it with intoxicating substances (addiction), or persecute it to keep it from hoping for life in this world (depression)… In this way I will preserve what is left of this prematurely amputated childhood-of an innocence that has suffered too much too soon!” 47

The protector/persecutor primitive defense does not learn anything about realistic danger as the child grows up. It functions on the magical level of consciousness with the same level of awareness it had when the original trauma or traumas occurred. Each new life opportunity is mistakenly seen as a dangerous threat of re-traumatization and is therefore attacked.48

Another parallel concept to Omer’s gatekeeper comes from August Boal, the founder of Theater of the Oppressed. Boal uses the term The Cop in the Head within the framework of the theater to refer to the oppressions that have been internalized.49 That which is oppressing people, Boal notes, is not always a person; sometimes it is morality, or the social structure, or the lack of economic power.50 Boal works on the boundaries of politics using Theater of the Oppressed techniques to study specific events, such as how to organize a strike. He explains that one of the reasons why many people do not dare to participate in a strike or other political actions is because of the Cops in their Heads, which are headquartered in the external reality.51 It is imperative, Boal claims, to locate both the cops that are in one’s heads and the headquarters. Furthermore, noting that nobody can be reduced to the condition of absolute object, he says that the oppressor produces two different reactions in the oppressed: subversion and submission. It is in the reaction of subversion that freedom and creativity lie, for as Boal writes; “Every oppressed is a submissive subversive. His submission is his Cop in the Head. But he is also subversive. Our goal is to render the subversion more dynamic while making the submission disappear.” 52

Turning more directly to intergenerational transmission of trauma, a rich source are Kellerman’s extensive writings on this topic as it relates to descendants of Holocaust survivors. Kellerman explains that at a conscious and unconscious level traumatic events continue to affect not only survivors but also their children; he notes that children of survivors absorb the pain of their parents and this pain becomes a major influence in their lives.53 Kellerman writes that the transmission of trauma may thus be seen as a kind of subtle parental mediating process through which the psychological burdens of survivors

39 are somehow transferred to their children from early infancy on, continuing to reverberate throughout childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and beyond.54 Kellerman notes that “much of the indirect influence of transgenerational transmission of trauma occurred through nonverbal, ambiguous, and guilt-inducing communication and especially through the infamous “conspiracy of silence.” 55 He has observed that some survivors were simply unable to feel, while others had the paradoxical response of euphoria mixed with emotional numbness.56 Kellerman remarks that for survivors and descendants the way to heal the transmission of trauma is through remembering properly, mourning, and working through in a safe and healing relationship.57

Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger differentiates between two kinds of family transmission: intergenerational transmissions and transgenerational transmissions.58

Intergenerational transmissions are spoken between grandparents, parents, and children whereas transgenerational transmissions are not spoken about; they are secrets, unspoken and kept quiet, sometimes censored from thought but still passed down through the generations. In her work with clients, Schutzenberger notes that talking, crying, screaming, or otherwise working out traumas leads to the disappearance of somatic or psychosomatic manifestations of illness. The main task, according to Schutzenberger, is to become conscious that something has been passed down.

Schutzenberger describes the inevitable transmission of trauma across generations, as follows:

How can we escape from the invisible threads of our family history, from the triangular alliances established in our family structure, from the frequent repetitions of difficult situations? In a way, we are less free than we think we are. Yet we can regain our freedom and put an end to repetitions by understanding what happens, by grasping the threads in their context and in all their complexity. We can thus finally live “our own” lives, and no longer the lives of our parents or

grandparents, or, for example, the life of a deceased brother or uncle whom we “replace,” knowingly or not.59

Schutzenberger believes that a trauma that had not been spoken about can re- emerge in the family 50 or even 100 years later.60 Trauma that survivors do not dare to speak about is kept in their minds and hearts and is passed down to the generations through either the shock reaching the DNA or through other somatic family links. She notes that this question of how trauma is passed down continues to be under research.61

Kaplan notes that silence is a defining feature of massive trauma, because survivors had to witness the torture and extermination of their families without being able to express their rage, terror, and grief.62 Kaplan describes intergenerational transmission of trauma as transposition.63 She argues that the trauma of the parents is unconsciously passed on to the child from a very early age; parents do not need to talk about the trauma but just through their care-giving gestures may pass their suffering to their children. The children in turn absorb the trauma and eventually feel responsible to alleviate their parents suffering.

Danieli contends that “silence, often the outcome of dissociation or repression, is a universal feature of trauma – and one that is often conveyed transgenerationally.” 64

Trauma, she notes, will be passed down as the family legacy, whether or not survivors talked or kept silent, even to children born after the trauma.65 Offering a socio-historical context, Danieli explains that Holocaust survivors, in their despair, wanted to recreate family.66 They considered family to be the most important aspect of life that had been lost to the Nazis. Although they were not able to properly grieve, survivors attempted to move on by creating new families. Children who were born after the war were viewed as a blessing and a sign that life, after the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust, could

41 indeed continue. New life was considered a victory over the Nazi attempt to completely annihilate the Jews. Naomi Mor further notes that for most survivors, these new families were an existential must, and were intended to provide the security, identity, continuity, and belonging, which Jewish survivors so needed.67

Drawing attention to the individual impact of such multi-generational trauma,

Abrams illustrates how a client’s symptom may be related to trauma that happened in their family generations back.68 She observes that very commonly these traumas are kept secret or have been silenced and though not verbally expressed, they continue to be passed on through the generations because they have not been dealt with and healed. Like

Kellerman, she argues that opening the space to talk about the feelings and history of events and issues that have been kept secret can have an immense effect on the ability of the family to move forward, reduce symptoms, and improve relationships.69

Related to the conversation about transmission of trauma is the work of MacCann and Pearlman who brought forward the idea of vicarious traumatization to describe trauma that is transmitted over the course of therapy from client to counselor.70

According to these theorists, being exposed to someone who has been traumatized can be traumatizing for that person, be the therapist or close family member. McCann and

Pearlman observe that “beliefs, expectations, and assumptions about the world are central to many current notions about the effect of victimization.” 71 Trauma disrupts four basics assumptions: the world is benign, the world is meaningful, the self is worthy, and people are trustworthy.72 Therapists working with clients that have experienced trauma may also experience PTSD symptoms, such as intrusive thoughts or images and painful emotional reactions.

In study of this phenomenon, Figley later coined the term compassion fatigue to describe this experience of such therapists or family members and identified this kind of trauma as secondary trauma or secondary traumatic stress (STS).73 According to Figley,

“We can define STS as the natural consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatizing event experienced by a significant other – the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person.” 74 Figley believes that the people that are most vulnerable to the contagion are those who see themselves as rescuers or saviors and this can happen between family members as well as therapist and client.75 This assertion parallels Danieli’s findings that therapists working with survivors of the Holocaust experienced guilt, rage, dread and horror, grief and mourning, shame, inability to contain intense emotions, and utilization of defenses such as numbing, denial, or avoidance.76

Nanette C. Auerhahn and Dori Laub propose that when a person has a psychotic level of experience like the Holocaust, the trauma lacks the associative network that otherwise happens with normal memories.77 Instead the experience of the traumatic event creates a “black hole” in which “destruction of the relationship to a ‘mother’ is at the heart of that void and is responsible for the unrepresentability of massive trauma… children of survivors weave fantasies from parents’ posttraumatic screens and their own developmental conflicts.” 78 It then happens that what is forgotten or erased leaves traces in the narratives and fantasy worlds of both generations.

Similar to other researchers, Auerhahn and Laub found that there are two types of

Holocaust survivors; those who talked about the Holocaust with family as well as publicly, and those who never talked about their experiences.79 They propose that since

43 the traumatic events have no psychic representation, both the narratives and the silence are not very different from each other because both obscure the events.80 Additionally,

Auerhahn and Laub contend that the memory of trauma is non-existent and thus trauma has no direct voice.81 The authors note that during trauma, a split arises within the ego.

One part registers what is happening while the other part remains isolated in an attempt to preserve the connection to life. While part of the self relates to a feeling of nothingness as if it were an empty circle, the other part relates to memories and times with humane qualities. This protected part creates a narrative of self-healing mythology which helps the survivor to overcome the trauma by providing life-giving stories.82

Auerhahn and Laub put forth that in order to re-member, re-collect, and create a whole memory of the traumatic events, survivors need to put together the fragments of the events.83 Initially, fragmentation helped the survivors protect themselves so that they did not have to see events in their whole entirety. Though bringing the fragments together allows survivors to perceive the experience in its entirety, it puts survivors at risk of re- activation of the trauma. Auerhahn and Laub point out that the mother provides a protective function and at the heart of the trauma experience is the absence of the mothering function; without her protection, survivors cannot create a coherent narrative of the events and instead there is a split off state and a feeling of nothingness.84 The authors note that children of survivors are attuned to this split-off state in their parents and grapple with the unspoken trauma, trying to understand and engage with it through fantasy. Auerhahn and Laub also remark that the process of mourning is compromised because of the absence of the internal representation of a mother who would hold and

44 soothe one during the process.85 They conclude by stating: “Without a mothering other, there is no universe, no God, and no life.” 86

Trauma can be passed down through the generations either consciously or unconsciously. A person might see the world and have certain beliefs about the world based on traumas that their ancestors experienced. Descendants of survivors of historical trauma, such as the Holocaust, might have a difficult time separating from their parents’ pain and having their own life because they are afraid of abandoning them. Disidentifying from survivor guilt, therefore, would involve giving voice to the trauma and performing any necessary healing such as processing and integrating different affects such as grief, anger, fear, and shame. This research study addresses more specifically the question of how third generation descendants may be carrying the trauma and how they can work with it. Particularly the study researched the imaginal structures and affective states that relate to this legacy. Additional questions to be explored pertain to how third generation descendants might bring internal and external supportive resources and voices to help them work with internalized negative voices resulting from intergenerational trauma and how this generation might bring the mothering other and re-connection to community that might be necessary for the metabolization of the trauma.

The Experience of Descendants of Holocaust Survivors

This section covers the impact of the Holocaust on second and third generation descendants from the point of view of research studies as well as descendants’ own expressions of their experiences. The subsection “Second Generation” details the experience of a generation deeply affected by silence or overexposure to their parents’

45 experience. Resources include various second-generation writers that grapple with the impact of the Holocaust and related meanings for their generation. Included here is discussion from such theorists as Wardi about ways that children carry the trauma of the

Holocaust within their family systems. The next subsection entitled “Third Generation” review studies on the impact of the Holocaust on this generation. Studies draw out discrepancies and questions about how much this generation is affected and in what ways. Presented here are Bar-On’s and Kellerman’s observations about the impact on third generation as well as more recent studies done by third generation descendants themselves. The subsection “Guilt Among Descendants” presents second and third generation writers grappling with feelings of guilt and survivor guilt.

The Second Generation

Hoffman writes about her experience as a second generation descendant, discussing the second generation as an imagined community. Also included in this subsection are several studies that propose that second generation meet the criteria for having PTSD. Wardi and Kaplan explain the role that assigned children (whom Wardi calls memorial candles) play in carrying the trauma of their parents.

Hoffman describes, “For me, the world as I knew it and the people in it emerged not from the womb, but from war.” 87 She explains that the second generation is the generation that feels a sense of a living connection to the Shoah and transforms the knowledge of events into history or into myth.88 Hoffman notes that she physically absorbed her parents’ unhappiness and suffering as if it was hers and that she felt loyal towards this suffering and responsible to make up for their trauma and provide them with

46 solace.89 Specifically, she describes how the feelings that she absorbed were unassimilated and undigested. She remarks, “For it was precisely the indigestibility of these utterances, their fearful weight of densely packed feeling, as much as any specific content that I took in as a child.” 90

According to Hoffman, the second generation can be best described as an imagined community where there is a sense of mutual belonging through a shared set of meanings, symbols, and even literary fictions, “the event that preceded us was fundamental enough to constitute an overwhelming given and a life task.” 91 She remarks, “The reference points through which we communicate and recognize each other have to do with our location in the dark topography of the Shoah and with the stages of a long and difficult reckoning – with our parents’ past and its deep impact on us; with our obligations to that past, and the conclusions we can derive from it for the present.” 92

Anna B. Baranowsky et al. note that there is substantial evidence that many of the offspring suffered from a secondary exposure to trauma which is in turn passed on to the third generation.93 Barocas and Barocas found that common PTSD symptomatology in second generation experience include intrusive images, nightmares, difficulty containing anger, restricted emotional rage, fear of death, and other associated symptoms such as depressive tendency and guilt over surviving the Holocaust.94

Wardi writes that in every survivor family, one child is chosen as the memorial candle, an instrument for commemoration, devotion, and mourning.95 Such children carry the emotional burden the parents did not work through. They identify with both their parents as well as relatives they never knew. Often a child from this generation bears the name of some relative that was murdered in the Holocaust and Wardi notes,

“He is also given the special mission of serving as the link which on the one hand preserves the past and on the other hand joins it to the present and the future.” 96

Wardi explains that for many memorial candles, their instinctual and emotional way of being is depressed and repressed.97 They inherit this way of being from their parent survivors who, in the midst of their trauma, repressed their emotions as a way to protect themselves. According to Wardi, children of survivors were exposed to the message, “always beware of any emotional outburst, as it holds the danger of death.” 98

She claims that because memorial candles felt the need to identify with their parents and families they experienced a redemptive emotional closing-off.

In alignment with Wardi, Kaplan writes that children of survivors might feel they need to do various things for their parents.99 She notes that children of survivors take on the tasks that their parent-survivors were not able to fully complete, including mourning the lives of those who died as well as expressing rage at the perpetrators; however, in expressing this rage, they tend to live their lives in hatred.100

While there was great pressure upon second generation descendants to keep silence, some where able to transgress this taboo and in speaking began to process the trauma for themselves and for their parents. The film, “Breaking the Silence: The

Generation After the Holocaust,” shows how in the late 1970s children of Holocaust survivors in their twenties and thirties began to break the silence their parents held around their experiences of the Holocaust.101 The film shows the work that second generation did together in one of the first support groups that was created for second generation.

This was the beginning of a movement towards creating a group identity as the second generation.102

The second generation has a unique experience and place in the history of the

Holocaust and extensive research has been done with this group. In an effort to understand and metabolize the experience of their parents, this generation has written extensively as well as created support groups. One of the characteristics of this generation is that they carry trauma for their parents. Their parents, the survivors of the direct trauma, are too overwhelmed with their experience to be able to process it. This subsection reviewed some of the attempts that the second generation has made to understand their role as the carriers of this heavy trauma and how, by beginning to talk about it, they began processing their parents’ as well as their own experience. The experience of the second generation is distinct from the third generation. This study aims at understanding some of these differences in terms of how the third generation might be affected and what their needs are in terms of metabolizing and individuating. Some research and writing has been done around the experience of the third generation. The next subsection presents these materials and resources that illuminate some of the differences between the more recent generation and those preceding.

The Third Generation

This subsection features research that has been done with third generation descendants around the impact of the Holocaust as well as the perceptions and beliefs of the third generation on how this legacy impacts them. Included here are learnings from

Lev-Wiesel who embarked on a comparative study among three generations to show the similarities and differences from survivors to grandchildren. Another source is Bar-On who has worked extensively with third generation descendants. Review of his findings

49 here include his model for how third generation can work through post-Holocaust trauma.

Also in this subsection is Chaitin’s work. Like Bar-On, she presents research done with

Israeli families and specifically with third generation. Also discussed is Mark L. Yaslow concept of transgenerational fingerprint of Holocaust trauma among third generation as well as some of his dissertation findings.103

Considered first here is Lev-Wiesel’s qualitative study with three families in

Israel that had experienced a particular trauma.104 In the family that had experienced the

Holocaust, both the second and third generations expressed high levels of empathy and identification with the survivor’s suffering. Each of the three generations emphasized the importance of family, stressing that only family members can be trusted and perceived life as fragile and temporary. Most significantly, each member of the three generations expressed a common mission, which was to remember the Holocaust, never forget what happened, and to transmit this charge to future generations.105

Lev-Wiesel’s finding that loyalty to the ancestors and remembering the atrocities were expected and overtly communicated was different than what was found in other families that experienced other kinds of trauma.106 She writes, “While it was apparent that the wound of the Holocaust would never heal, it had to be evoked and remembered out of loyalty. This remembrance seemed to be a debt paid for the suffering of the first generation, and was a lesson to be learned and taught for the sake of future generations.” 107 Lev-Wiesel believes that the level of secondary traumatization experienced by a generation influences the degree to which trauma is passed on to following generations.108

Flora Hogman found that second generation women impart to their children much of what they experienced growing up, such as holding on to physical reminders of dead relatives as well as a pervasive sense of fear.109 Hogman also discovered certain positive growth experiences in the third generation, who were involved in learning about their family’s history and creating community. The grandchildren of survivors were able to honor their grandparents’ survival rather than carry the burden of living for the dead, as their parents had.

Another helpful resource is Cornejo’s dissertation on third generation descendants.110 The purpose of her study was to explore the attachment styles of third generation Holocaust survivors as compared with that of their parents.111 The aim was to investigate whether grandchildren of survivors still exhibit qualities of attachment that are indicative of trauma. Cornejo explains that the literature is still divided as to whether

Holocaust war traumas continue to have an effect on the functionality and psychological health of third generation survivors.112 However, she hypothesized that in light of the intergenerational nature of attachment patterns, third generation would have the same insecure attachment style and patterns as their parents.113 While secure attachments are built when the mother is responsive and attuned to the baby and therefore the baby feels protected and safe, insecure attachments are the result of defensive processes which allow the baby to manage their disappointment and pain at not being attuned to and having their attachment needs met.114 Her study found that for the population studied, insecure attachment style and patterns was fairly consistent through the generations suggesting that the trauma of the Holocaust continues to have an impact.115 She also notes that as research related to third generation descendants of Holocaust survivors is continuing to

51 grow, it is evident that there are similarities to the preceding generations as well as differences that set them apart. Cornejo argues that this generation brings with it the difficulty of a painful historical past and also the opportunity for growth and healing; noting that research reveals that third generation descendants bring opportunities for strengthening familial bonds and healing because of their generational distance from the original trauma.116

In another study, John Sigel and Morton Weinfeld, found that third generation descendants had higher level of psychological well-being as compared to the second generation, but also evidenced a higher level of identification with the first generation.117

They suggest that because grandchildren feel more secure in their own sense of self, they can allow themselves to identify with their grandparents’ experiences and background.

Thus, the effects of Holocaust trauma appeared to affect the third generation differently than the second generation.118

In her study of three generations within families of descendants of Holocaust survivors in Israel, Chaitin’s main finding was that across generations, dealing with the

Holocaust is emotionally difficult and there is a tendency to believe that one must overcome misfortune by bearing with it, instead of openly processing it.119 Among many of the third generations Chaitin interviewed, she found that the Holocaust is still a taboo topic in their families, which she interprets as a sign that there is still a conspiracy of silence among families and in Israeli culture.120 Some members of the third generation have an inability to understand the significance that the Holocaust has in their lives. She coined the term paradoxical relevance to explain the experience of those who think that

52 the Holocaust has an impact in their lives but have not worked out and integrated its significance.121

Related to consideration of relevance, Bar-On created the term partial relevance to explain his observation that third generation descendants’ need to understand that the

Holocaust has some relevance in their lives while also understanding that the legacy cannot explain all present-day social phenomena.122 In his work with third generation,

Bar-On found that some feel the past has no relevance while others over-generalize it and think the past is responsible for all of what happens in the present. Bar-On’s discussion of partial relevance leads him to the contention that people need to understand the ways in which the past impacts them in the present so they can work through the Holocaust.

Bar-On found that grandchildren descendants fall on a spectrum in relation to their exposure to the Holocaust.123 Although the majority are exposed through schools and the media, the exposure to the Holocaust in their families vary from hearing stories and talking about the Holocaust to complete silence about it. According to Bar-On, they are all impacted. For those who hear stories, the impact is clearer while for those whose families are silent, the impact is unclear and ambiguous.124 Bar-On contends that third generation members hold possibilities for clarifying issues that their grandparents had previously repressed and silenced.125 In his research with Israeli youth, he theorized that for the third generation the working-through process includes four basic stages: The first involves obtaining knowledge, such as what happened during the Holocaust and what happened to their family. The second stage is understanding, such as the ability to place the fact within a historical, political, and moral context. The third stage involves the emotional responses the young people will have about what they find out. Bar-On

53 remarks that the typical emotional responses were anger, mostly towards the world that let it happen; fear that it can happen again; shame at the fact that people did such things; and pride for remaining humane and fighting back. The fourth stage, Bar-On observes, involves the young people forming attitudes toward what happened and developing understanding about the lessons for the present and future.126

Kellerman agrees that grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are affected by the legacy, noting that the extent of how grandchildren are affected depends on who they are, as well as whom their parents and grandparents are, and the quality of their relationship.127 Kellerman states that it is more likely that grandchildren may absorb the pain from the Holocaust if their parents and grandparents are depressed and suicidal than if the children grow up in a well-balanced household. Nevertheless, he argues that it is impossible to prove that trauma specifically from the Holocaust is passed down because he writes, “such an influence may be assumed to be highly diluted after half a century.” 128 Kellerman clarifies that even though tertiary traumatization cannot be clearly demonstrated, third generation descendants carry a trace of the Holocaust that is mostly visible as existential angst.129 He writes, “This existential angst has become part of their destiny because their lives cannot be taken for granted after the Holocaust.

Simply put, if their grandparents had not miraculously survived, they would not exist, either.” 130

Yaslow performed an empirical, quantitative, and qualitative study of 58 grandchildren of Holocaust survivors in which he sought to identify what he calls a transgenerational fingerprint of Holocaust trauma.131 Yaslow uses the term post-

Holocaust trauma to refer to the trauma that generations removed from the event may

54 experience.132 Yaslow found that participants in the study who had experienced transformation of post-Holocaust trauma manifested greater forgiveness towards themselves than participants who had not transformed the trauma.133 Writing about the relationship between transformation and forgiveness, he observed, ”If we cannot transform the meaning of trauma within ourselves we cannot forgive, and wherever there is a limit to forgiveness we find where the remembrance of trauma has taken up residence.” 134

Through filmmaking and fiction writing, third generation descendants have been processing their relationship to the Holocaust. In his film, Yoav Shamir, takes a critical look at organized events such as “The March of the Living.” The March of the Living is a project that takes Jewish youth to Poland to see the concentration camps.135 Shamir comments: “So much emphasis in the past as horrific as it’s been is holding us back…

Maybe it is about time to live in the present and look to the future.” 136

Daniel Mendelsohn proposes that the process of moving forward includes looking back, knowing how one came to be, and what one has lost.137 Jane Korman took her father who is a survivor of the Holocaust and her children to Auschwitz to film what has become a controversial video were they all dance to the song, “I Will Survive,” by Gloria

Gaynor in front of the crematorium.138 According to the grandfather, he wanted to express his joy of being alive, of surviving, of having grandchildren.

One of the issues that the third generation grapples with is what Shamir identifies as the need and the benefit of moving towards the future instead of staying in the trauma of the past. However, Mendelsohn proposes moving forward effectively might require looking back, learning about one’s familial and cultural history, and identifying what has

55 been lost. One of the ways that third generation members have strived to accomplish these tasks is by researching and imagining the past which has a healing effect upon them.

Studies aimed at building understanding of the impact of the Holocaust on third generation descendants have been varied in their findings. Some studies reveal that third generation received the strong message to never forget what happened and that they must transmit this knowledge to the future generations. Members of this generation tend to feel high levels of empathy and identification with Holocaust survivors’ suffering and they feel a sense of loyalty and responsibility to remember what happened to their ancestors.

The literature indicates that second generation members transmitted a pervasive sense of fear to the third generation members, including that the wound of the Holocaust will never heal. Research also shows that in contrast to the second generation, third generation descendants are able to honor their grandparents’ survival rather than feeling burdened about those who died. Some writers recognize that third generation members bring opportunities for healing because of their generational distance from the original trauma.

Yaslow points to the fact that such individuals who have been able to transform their experience of trauma have greater potential to forgive themselves.

This research study is different from other research done with third generation descendants in unique ways and as such adds to the current field of psychology and to what others have found. This study focuses on the affective experiences of participants by engaging the participants in a direct experience which allowed them to express and learn more about themselves and what might be unconscious or previously not allowed to be expressed. Another difference is the methodology used. This research utilized expressive

56 arts, ritual, and ecstatic cultural practices. The research studies done previously did not use an experiential and imaginal approach to their studies. This research intended to create an experience where participants were able to tap into feelings, states, and engage with material in a way that is not quantifiable but is experiential and qualitative. Another difference may also be that the researcher, a third generation descendant herself, interpreted the data considering closely the relationship between her, the co-researchers and those researched.

Guilt Among Descendants

This subsection reviews writings on the experience of guilt and survivor guilt among third generation descendants. Included is Aaron R. Denham’s definition of intergenerational survivor guilt and Barocas and Barocas’ on separation guilt. Also included are a selection of contemporary female writers, including third generation descendants, who reflect on Jewish guilt and survivor guilt: Ellenson writes about the conflict and guilt that she feels for doing something different than what she thinks her ancestors want her to do. Kadish writes about her thoughts on descendants’ guilt, the

Holocaust, the messages she received as a female third generation descendant and the role of the third generation.

In beginning this subsection, it is important to note that various researchers and authors remark that survivor guilt is not only experienced by the survivors themselves but also by the descendants of the survivors.139 Denham expands upon this understanding, explaining that intergenerational survivor guilt involves the “concern over betraying ancestors for being excluded from the suffering.” 140 In their study with second-

57 generation survivors of the Holocaust, Bar-On et al. similarly found that the children of survivors have a difficult time accepting their right to happiness.141 The survivor guilt they experience is in relation to not feeling entitled to happiness because their parents experienced so much injustice. They feel that they owe their good fortune to their parents but feel guilty that they have so much while their parents sacrificed themselves. They also feel that it is not fair that they enjoy themselves while many others who were more deserving cannot experience happiness. The authors note that the second generation descendants suffer guilt simply because their circumstances have been so much better than those experienced by their parents, even though they realized that this was what the parents intended for them.142

Barocas and Barocas note that the process of individuation and separation itself becomes a source of guilt for the children of survivors.143 Because they have felt so much pressure to be attentive to their parents, to not abandon them, and because they know that any experience of loss would re-kindle memories of Holocaust and losing their families, the children of survivors have a hard time leaving home and becoming independent. In reality, it is the parent who needs closeness with the children and does not allow them to separate.

Art Spiegelman a second generation descendant, describes his experience with feelings of survivor guilt, writing, “I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through!... I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did.” 144

Echoes of this reflection on guilt are found in other writings. S. Hanala Stander writes, “There were twelve million Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. Hitler killed

58 half. That left six million feeling guilty.” 145 In the introduction to a collection of short stories on Jewish guilt as experienced by modern women, Ellenson writes:

(B)etween the ideal of who you should be, and the reality of who you are, lies guilt. And when you’re Jewish, there’s no shortage of people who are willing to point out just how guilty you should feel. For me, it often takes the form of the following internal reprimand: “Jews have barely managed to survive for thousands of years, and you, you little pisher, are you going to make one bad decision and screw it up for everybody? 146

Reflecting upon her experience after a fight she had with her grandmother, Ellenson comments about another such reprimand, as follows: “Think you’re entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Silly American! A constant sense of obligation and connection to family, community, and Torah is for Jews.” 147 She points out the tension and difficulty for Jewish women about deciding how much they owe to their heritage and how much should they follow their heart.148

Kadish, a third generation descendant of Holocaust survivors, writes about her thoughts on descendants’ guilt and the Holocaust and explains that her grandfather would tell her to have six children because the Nazis “killed one third of them so Jews need numbers.” 149 She talks about how he would endlessly tell her to remember the Holocaust because otherwise nobody would. This was echoed in Jewish schools and summer camps.

The message she received was that if she did not remember then it was as if she would let

Hitler’s victims die all over again. Kadish claims that for children and grandchildren of survivors, there was never any danger of forgetting.150

Kadish later writes about the uselessness of feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and that she instead feels a sense of responsibility for fighting for justice and enjoying life.151 She believes her grandparents want her to have a good life. Comparing other people’s suffering to one’s suffering and feeling guilty because one’s life is good while

59 they died is a moral dead end. What is important, she believes, is the action one takes such as speaking about anti-Semitism, racism, and enjoying life’s wonders to the fullest.152

Drawing upon the image of judo, Kadish uses the term guilt judo as a way to illustrate the rules of her family dynamics. While the sport utilizes arm-twists, throws, and the art of the pin (when in Judo the person holds their opponent down as a way to control them), so too the family exercises metaphorical arm-twists, throws, and pins.

Kadish states: “Family obligations pin the needs of single people. The needs of the elders pin the needs of the young… The Holocaust pins everything.” 153 She proposes that the goal is to “not pin everyone else ad infinitum,” but to carry the important pieces of memory so that people see, understand, and act differently in the world because this happened. People should not feel guilty if there is movement forward and eventually the

Holocaust occupies a smaller place in the cultural landscape.154 If the Holocaust is less in people’s memories, it is not because of abomination or healing but a fact of life. She states, “It won’t signal that we’ve failed – that we’ve let down the Holocausts’ survivors or worse, its victims – but rather that we’ve simply, regretfully, tragically, hopefully moved forward.” 155

Jack Felman describes his feelings of guilt towards those who died and/or survived. He writes, “I feel very guilty and angry that my grandparents, uncles and aunts died and I couldn’t do anything about it. I feel guilty and angry that millions of Jews were murdered and I wasn’t able to help.” 156

Second and third generation descendants may experience guilt and survivor guilt over having a better life than the suffering grandparents or dead relatives. Children of

60 survivors have a difficult time accepting their right to happiness and right to individuate.

Third generation received constant messages that they need to remember the Holocaust because otherwise nobody would. They also feel a sense of obligation to produce Jewish children as a way to perpetuate the tribe and make up for the losses.

Gaps in the literature are an indication for what this research project on survivor guilt might help to illuminate. While sources identify guilt and survivor guilt, the literature does not indicate ways that third generation descendants may work with this guilt in order to integrate their experience. There is also no indication of the dynamics of internalization of ancestors as gatekeepers or how descendants might begin disidentifying from survivor guilt. There are indications in the literature that descendants might feel guilty about healing, but there is nothing written or studied that directly talks about this.

The intention of this study was to learn more about the integration of the experience of survivor guilt as well as to understand more about subjective experience of gatekeeping dynamics. By supporting third generation descendants with engaging their guilt, they might begin disidentifying from survivor guilt.

The ongoing challenge is for this generation to remember and heal without feeling that by doing so they are betraying their ancestors. The research of this study engaged third generation in such a process and addressed the need for developing the voice of the third generation. There is little research pertaining to the third generation’s experience, including very few studies done by third generation themselves. There is nothing from the orientation of Imaginal Psychology about the third generation. While there is some research within the field of psychology, these materials are still living in the shadow of the second generation and not necessarily engaging and inhabiting the unique perspective

61 or terrain that third generation can provide. Yet there is a need since third generation experience, including their suffering, is unique and obviously different than the previous two generations. This work is also unique in that it identifies patterns or imaginal structures unique to third-generation women. The voice of the third generation is an emerging voice. More research and attention on the experience and voice of the third generation might help bring more understanding and more tools to support healing. In addition, this study aims at bridging some of these gaps by using Imaginal psychology and transformative practices.

From Survivor Guilt to Authentic Power

This last section of the Literature Review starts with an exploration of the concept of authentic power as understood by psychologists and spiritual teachers. The first subsection, “Ritualizing and Transforming Experience,” presents theories on how ritual, drama therapy, art, and expression help people process trauma and transform their experiences. The subsection entitled “Embracing the Legacy: Moving Towards Power,” covers various psychotherapists and thinkers who have been working with descendants of historical trauma, some using drama therapy and expressive arts therapy. The third subsection, entitled “Cultural Practices of Ritual and Transformation,” touches on the power of cultural practices such as Jewish dance and song to hold affective experiences such as grief and joy. This subsection includes an overview of the Jewish Renewal movement and the role it has played during the post-Holocaust era in re-introducing Jews to Jewish ecstatic practices and mythic imagination and in doing so helping them to process intergenerational trauma. The last subsection, “Uncovering the Power of Divine

Feminine,” presents female archetypes and feminine forces in Judaism and Sumerian mythology including the Shekhinah, Lilith, Miriam, the Goddess Inanna and her sister

Ereshkigal. These figures can be strong feminine forces that help hold the experience of trauma and its transformation into authentic power.

Authentic Power

Psychologists as well as spiritual teachers throughout time have presented definitions of power and authentic power. This subsection provides an overview from such theorists as Ethel S. Person and Omer who write about authentic power, Rollo May who writes about the five levels of power, John E. Mack who writes about primary power and secondary power, and Sam Keen who write about sacred and profane power, and

Thich Nhat Hanh.

Person explains that the word power derives from the Latin posse, “to be able.” 157

She notes that while one way in which power is understood is as the ability to dominate others, in her opinion power is the vehicle through which we exert some measure of control over the course of our own lives.158 Person refers to such power as authentic power and writes that an individual with authentic power has a sense of being comfortable and content within, has the ability to face fear and difficulties, has an ability to express themselves and chart their own direction, is assertive, and creates meaning in their life.159

Omer also uses the concept of authentic power. He states: “Authentic Power (or

Soul Power or the Power of Being) refers to the spectrum of human capacities and qualities that are responsive to various domains of life experience in ways that engender

63 truth, beauty, and justice. Authentic Power emerges through enduring and transmuting the vulnerabilities we experience when we turn towards the sensitivities that embody the soul’s passionate nature.” 160 Another unusual definition of power is from Hanh who describes genuine power as being happy in the present moment rather than the more conventional understanding of power as being about acquiring material wealth and dominance over others; for the betterment of the planet, Hanh pleas to the western world to redefine their understanding of power.161

Broadening the context to include consideration of power imbalance as a factor in conflict, May writes that power is the birthright of every human being and when people feel powerless they are more likely to become violent.162 He proposes five levels of power: “the power to be, self-affirmation, self-assertion, aggression, and violence.” 163 If self-assertion meets resistance the person resorts to aggression and May notes that,

“When all efforts towards aggression are ineffective, there occurs the ultimate explosion known as violence. Violence is largely physical because the other phases, which can involve reasoning or persuasion, have been ipso facto blocked off.” 164

Mack also emphasizes that possessing personal power is essential to the self. He notes that people need to have a sense that they are the creator of their own life, feel effective in the world, have their voices heard, have a feeling that there are in charge of their own lives, and can impact their surroundings or other people.165 He believes that power comes from the energy sources in nature and that humans express it in two different ways; primary power, which is about maintaining harmony with these energies and with nature, and secondary power, which is about controlling nature or dominating others, sometimes with harmful and destructive results whether intended or not.166

Keen differentiates between profane power and sacred power by identifying the contrasting qualities and effects of each.167 He notes that the exercise of profane power is individualistic and seeks to dominate others through demanding conformity and obedience.168 Profane power is used to gain more power as it coerces, separates, mystifies, hypnotizes, and exerts violence. This form of power is diminished when it is shared and so is seen as a possession. It tends to be exercised with speed and seeks to conquer and vindicate the neurotic holder. Keen describes profane power as a “zero sum game” by which he means that at the end it does not benefit anybody. Sacred power on the other hand seeks the fulfillment of the other, is intersubjective and creates diversity and pluralism.169 It is used to gain justice and ultimately benefits everyone, therefore it is a win-win game. Sacred power invites, unites, and is increased by being shared. Keen observes that such power is wonderful, awesome, fascinates, is a gift, and is erotic in its nature as it seeks to enjoy the other.

Person, May, and Mack note that power, autonomy, and a sense of control and agency is a human need and a human right. There is agreement among these authors that stepping into authentic power means taking responsibility for one’s life as well as having a sense of control over the course of one’s life. Additionally, Hanh and Keen highlight power as a resource that has the potential to further humankind in relation to each other and the world. Omer offers an understanding of power as consisting of a cluster of capacities that increase one’s effectiveness in facing the complexities of life.

This study is aimed at researching third generation descendants engaging their experience of being descendants and its relationship to power. This research explores the ways in which engaging with their experience about the Holocaust might evoke issues

65 related to their own power. From the definitions of power provided here, it is clear that their sense of power might also relate to whether they are able to process the trauma they might be carrying, how they grapple with messages as to how to hold the trauma, how much can they own their lives, and whether they can choose themselves while also honoring their cultural and familial legacy. Given that it is an experience of loss of power, perhaps engaging with Holocaust trauma also evokes broader questions pertaining to experiences of oppression as Jewish women descendants and ways to re-claim their power. The psychic work related to power may include the need to work with the guilt associated with transforming this trauma instead of just holding it or doing as one guesses that an ancestor might want them to; to marry and take care of family and tribe, instead of choosing themselves.

Ritualizing and Transforming Experience

Presented in this subsection are selected theorists who address the transformative power of ritual as well as the power of the arts as therapeutic tools. Omer is a key theorist whose thinking is used to interpret the experience of participants in the research study.

Particularly related to this subsection is his thinking and understanding on the transformative power that ritualizing experience can have on individuals and groups.

Another important theorist on ritual is Turner whose definitions of the concepts of communitas and liminal space are included here. In terms of the arts as therapeutic and transformative tools, an important writer is Adam Blatner who discusses how drama therapy and expression lead to catharsis necessary for psychic integration. Another theorist included here is Stephen Levine who elaborates on the power the arts have in

66 helping people hold painful experiences. Jean Shinoda Bolen’s belief that women’s circles have tremendous capacity for changing culture is also relevant to this subsection.

Omer’s understanding of transformation as an expansion of awareness with both telos (purpose) and complexity which allows a consciousness of multiplicities that enables the person to expand the sense of “I” and feel more comfortable in a larger range of social settings as well as enjoy affinity groups of many varieties.170 According to

Omer, authentic power is ecstatic, beyond the ground one habitually stands on. He notes that from the place of authentic power one is able to creatively tap into psychological multiplicity, the “many distinct and often encapsulated centers of subjectivity within the experience of the same individual,” in such a way that is liberating and expansive.171

Omer’s conceptualization about ritualization is also important to this work. Ritual

Trust is defined by Omer as: “trust engendered through participation in ritual that enables a temporary submerging of differences, ambivalences and conflict, liberating a revitalized

Eros within the relationship or group.” 172 He believes that ritual is a very powerful transformative agent which is needed for the care of the soul because ritual helps in bearing difficult times, particularly the unchanging dimensions of human existence such as death, loss, illness, aging, danger, betrayal, abandonment, and cruelty.173 These dimensions of existence are unbearable without ritual. He further proposes that ritual is resisted because it requires surrender or willingness to allow what is happening to happen

For example, surrender allows one’s sadness to turn into tears.174 According to Omer, one needs to express in order to experience deeply and vulnerability is the doorway to power.175 By expressing experience, affects can be transmuted into capacities: grief turns into compassion and mercy, anger into fierceness, fear into courage, shame into

67 autonomy, dignity and humility.176 Omer explains that ritualization supports deepening, embodying, and personalizing experience.177 By engaging in these actions one can cultivate capacities. Also relevant is Omer’s concept of the ecstatic imperative which he defines as “the soul’s creative and symptomatic expression of its passionate and plural nature despite the constrictions of personal identity and requirements of conventional culture.” 178

Turner uses the concept of communitas to explain what might transpire in ritual.179 For Turner, communitas is not the same as community; instead of just being a collection of people, communitas refers to the experience of a group of people who gather for ritual and share honestly, with openness and lack of pretensions. Ritual can be transformative when communitas and liminality (that place or experience of in between) are present.180 Turner notes that when one is on a threshold, an identity is being shed and another one is emerging. The liminal mode, according to Turner, is highly creative and yet ambiguous, marginal and yet essential, protected and yet dangerous, revitalizing and yet transgressive.181 This mode is characterized by a lack of structure, including structures that keep things in order and keep identity in place, and an expansion of space and structure. Effective ritual tends to bring about liminality. Turner contrasts liminality with status; in liminal space, all the things that set people apart are not active and there is break from the social contract.182 Communitas and liminality describe social conditions in which participants are encouraged to probe, transgress, invert, condense, and transform cultural values. Individuals or societies can be sent to the limen (threshold), an ambiguous state in which they go through transitions from one stage, status, role, or level

68 of consciousness to another. These liminal phases are often experienced as a time of crisis, though the crisis is highly creative and necessary for growth.183

Shifting to consideration of therapeutic uses of art, an important resource is

Levine who draws upon the term, poiesis, which is the old Greek word for poetry and artmaking.184 Levine notes that the concept of poiesis illustrates the capacity that art has to express truth and give meaning and direction to human existence.185 Poiesis, he says, belongs to human existence as an essential possibility; it is a fundamental way of being- in-the-world. However, because being is not at our disposal as a project of the will, poiesis depends upon one’s willingness to stand aside and attend to the images that are given to them. Levine states, “The therapeutic power of art rests not it its elimination of suffering but rather in its capacity to hold us in the midst of that suffering so that we can bear the chaos without denial or flight.” 186

From another perspective within the world of art therapy, Blatner explains that psychodrama is a form of exploring psychological and social problems in which participants enact the relevant events instead of just talking about them.187 More importantly, participants explore the psychological aspects of the events such as unspoken thoughts and feelings, encounters with those not present, opportunities to portray what others might be feeling, and viewing the problems in alternative ways.188

Blatner remarks, “psychodrama is meant to be a corrective or emancipatory approach.” 189

Blatner proposes that expression through drama therapy and psychodrama is valuable because it both clarifies and validates feelings and ideas.190 By expressing one’s thoughts and feelings through actions such as moving, gesturing, and touching while

69 other people witness one’s experience is validating and allows a deeper communication of the fullness of experience and strength of feelings to others as well as to the self.191

The person overcomes defenses and realizes that they had more feelings about the issue than they originally thought.192

Blatner remarks that there are circumstances in which talk cannot fully satisfy because grief or confusion is too great.193 Therefore, feelings and associated images are better expressed through art, singing, dancing, movement, or making music. Blatner defines the concept of act hunger as the need people have to fully express themselves and experience the feelings in their bodies instead of just talking about them.194 Act hunger implies a recognition that there is, in the human psyche, a positive need to feel one’s self embodying the fullness of an act.195 Self-expression helps the person gain insight as well as discover and experience vitality. When a person takes risks by expressing through an exaggerated emotional behavior such as exuberance, silliness, laughter, or even angry gestures, there is a release of tension and a corresponding catharsis.196 Healing happens because parts of the psyche that have been separate reunite. The outward expression of emotion is a reflection of an inner reintegrative process.197

Bolen proposes that women’s circles have the potential to change culture.198 She notes that a person and a circle have the potential of reaching many people and influencing others on changing how they think and behave. Thus women’s circles can be a revolutionary-evolutionary movement even though they may not appear as such. Each woman and each circle contributes to something grander. As a leader and a participant in many women’s circles Bolen shares that despite the successes and failures of a given

70 circle she “saw how ritual and ceremony tapped into the imagination and were a medium for creativity and spirituality.” 199

Bolen remarks that women have a natural talent for the formation and maintenance of circles.200 She sees the circle as an archetypal form that feels familiar to women’s psyches because it is personal and egalitarian. She contends that a critical number of women’s circles have the power to change human culture.201 Bolen holds this contention because she sees feminine aspects such as discerning wisdom and compassion will balance those of patriarchy and help bring forth the indigenous wisdom of relatedness to all living things in the planet. The circle in itself is an embodiment of the wisdom that women have. Both are needed by the world. According to Bolen, a sacred circle is much more than the experience of this generation.202 Each circle draws on women’s circles that have ever existed while tapping into the archetypal. She explains:

Each circle is a regeneration of the archetypal shape and form that draws from every woman’s circle that ever was, and each circle in turn adds to the field of archetypal energy that will make it easier for the next circle. Morphic fields and archetypes behave as if they have an invisible pre-existence outside of space and time, become instantly accessible to us when we align ourselves with that form, and are expressed in our thoughts, feelings, dreams, and actions.203

Ritual may be understood as a space that can be created in a group or community where the individuals can let go of constricted identity or frozen emotion and be vulnerable. Participants may express in a way that they had not done before and in this way, communitas is created. Levine and Blatner point out that expressive arts can also be vital to the healing process. The research design for this study aimed at using ritual, expressive arts, drama therapy, and psychodrama to engage participants in new ways regarding the impact of the Holocaust. Gaps in the literature exist around how ritual and drama therapy can be used specifically to process and metabolize survivor guilt. There is

71 also no literature focusing specifically on a group of third-generation women descendants ritualizing post-Holocaust trauma and what may arise as they do so. The absence of material on ritual amongst third-generation women descendants is an indicator that third generation experience is neglected or overlooked. This absence could also point to ways that Jewish community is handicapped in remediating the full ramifications of the

Holocaust. The intention of this study is to attend to these matters by ritualizing third generation experience.

Embracing the Legacy: Moving Towards Power

This subsection explores some of the ways therapists and educators have engaged therapeutically with the legacy of the Holocaust. Especial attention is given to Herman,

Naor, and Volkas who have contributed greatly to the work with descendants. As part of their therapeutic approach they use of drama therapy, expressive arts therapy, and psychodrama. Also included in this subsection are Eva Fogelman and Hoffman who discuss the issues that may come up as descendants process this legacy towards transformation. This research engaged third generation in drama therapy and expressive arts to help them enter into affective experiences as well as explore the imaginal structures around the trauma that has been passed down to them. The study aimed at engaging participants with the legacy in a way that engenders power and authentic power instead of staying in the trauma. The information in this subsection presents ways in which others have already similarly engaged with descendants.

Volkas believes that drama therapy has the potential to be transformative and can be a powerful tool in helping people move towards ending the cycle of retraumatization and perpetration.204 In describing the process that participants undergo, Volkas says:

(participants) have the opportunity to transform the feelings they have inherited so that they are no longer imprisoned by them. The cycle of rage, shame, and guilt is broken. People feel less burdened or depressed, more able to manage difficult cross-cultural interactions in the world.205

Volkas defines various phases that take place through the process to include breaking the taboo against speaking to each other, humanizing each other through telling our stories, exploring and owning the potential perpetrator in all of us, moving deeply into grief, creating integration performances, and ritual of remembrance.206 He explains that it is often the member of the family who has been consciously or unconsciously designated to carry the family legacy who shows up at the workshops.207 When people come together for such work, he states, the collective grief of the participants’ parents, grandparents, ancestors, and culture is present. Volkas gives workshop participants the opportunity to express this grief as fully as possible because he contends that it is not until the grief is fully expressed and worked through that the trauma will no longer be passed down through the generations.208

Volkas remarks that, “drama therapy and expressive arts approaches are able to contain deep wells of emotion through symbolic processes, aesthetic distance, and their capacity to work through grief.” 209 He uses psychodrama as the modality to give shape to the stories participants bring and as a means for them to process their complex feelings of grief.210 In addition to doing psychological work related to inherited trauma, Volkas recommends that participants also get involved in acts of creation and social action. He proposes that although trauma will never disappear and one has a permanent relationship

73 to it, by embracing the legacy and expressing the emotional energy that has been contained within, a person might liberate themselves from the denial or rejection of its existence.211

Reflecting upon an inter-generational psychodrama experience in Krakow and

Auschwitz, Herman comments about a psychodrama that the group created and in which she participated, saying:

What’s the good of this pretend play as if we can in reality never escape? Everyone wants to be a victim and then become a hero. No perpetrators among us-we’re all clean… I want to scream, No, the worst we do is to each other.212

Herman describes how while a brochure for Auschwitz says that “… encounters at the threshold of Auschwitz fill us with hope and make us experience the victory of humanity” that is not her experience.213 For her, Auschwitz represents “humanity’s capacity for evil.” 214 She emphasizes that we need to see and be with the reality that human beings are capable of evil. And furthermore, that we all have the perpetrator and the potential for evil in all of us. She does not want to ignore that, and she does not want to ignore that evil caused the Holocaust and that we must stay with the anger and the pain.

Herman argues that engaging with the images of evil and one’s own images of the

Holocaust through art is a way to increase one’s capacity to work with historical trauma.

According to Herman:

(A)rtful engagement increases this capacity to face historical trauma. We can distance and engage. We must not become comfortable with it. Our experience as it changes is honored as authentic and valid because it is our own.215

Herman presents a theory of how those who did not go through the Holocaust might hold the experience.216 She differentiates people into three groups, referred to as

74 iterations. The first iteration includes those who documented the facts such as journalists, liberators, and caregivers. They pass the story of what “actually happened” through their own perspective. The second iteration involves those who attempt to understand, identify, or resonate with those who experienced the Holocaust. The third iteration includes those who try to understand not so much the experience of those directly affected but their own experience. Herman writes about the third iteration: “[They are more] concerned with their own experience of the images of this evil event…. They focus on their own responses to the images of the events and look for the relevance to their own times….

They are consciously not wishing to perpetrate and re-enact historical trauma but rather consciously wishing to creatively shape traumatic legacies into something new.” 217

The goal of using the arts and drama therapy, according to Naor, is not necessarily to bring reconciliation but to help individuals find new expressions and creative ways to deal emotionally with the psychological burdens they might carry.218 He remarks, “the arts provide a safe arena for expression and experiencing the inner truth.” 219

Another useful reflection is from Fogelman who writes about the second generation attending to the legacy of the Holocaust and notes that when children of survivors begin the confrontation stage of mourning the losses and suffering of their parents, it will evoke feelings of guilt, sadness, depression, anger, rage and a wish to undo their parents’ suffering.220 Through this process, they may become aware that they are not giving themselves permission to enjoy life because they think it would be disloyal to their dead relatives who suffered so much. She writes that it is important for them to realize that their descendants are not expecting them to maintain an active stance of mourning for the rest of their lives. Such insights can provide descendants the permission

75 to live in the present without the constant burden of living in the past.221 Aligned with

Fogelman and Naor, Alan L. Berger and Naomi Berger write that integrating the experience of Holocaust does not mean getting over the Holocaust but processing it enough that they do not feel paralyzed by it.222

Kellerman has led drama therapy workshops with multiple generations of descendants of the Holocaust. One of his participants wrote that the workshop allowed him to express feelings in ways he had not been able to do before, that he felt “seen,” which allowed him to gradually transform some of his overwhelming feelings and thus experience a sense of relief.223 The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to openly talk about families being in denial of the transmission of the trauma. This dynamic was exemplified at the workshop when one of the participants was talking about the transmission of trauma and her grandmother defensively turned to the teary granddaughter, saying, “No, no, no, we did not pass on any of our trauma to you, and you do not need to be upset.” 224 Kellerman writes that families deny the transmission of trauma which causes descendants to feel unsafe sharing how they are affected. The author writes, “misplaced efforts or reassurance and clichés like ‘that was in the past, we must look to the future’ merely inflame feelings of fury or silent rage.” 225

Rachel N. Baum argues that it is important not to take the stories of the survivors as ones’ own story but to understand one’s relationship to the Holocaust and come up with ones’ own story.226 Baum analyzes the role of Holocaust education and emphasizes the need for consideration of “how to embrace a Judaism of both memory and joy, how to define ones’ own relationship to the destruction, how to be shaped by history without

76 being destroyed by it – in other words, how to remember.” 227 She believes that each generation must articulate their own particular relationship to the event.

Bjorn Krondorfer, who has led programs seeking reconciliation between third generation descendants of Jews and Germans involved in the Holocaust, explains that to transform their strained relations, they must allow their long-stored anger, grief, and pain to emerge.228 He writes, “Reconciliation demands a willingness to become vulnerable and honest in the presence of another.” 229 Krondorfer argues that third-generation Jews and Germans have the opportunity to work toward reconciliation because they have enough distance from the event and are not paralyzed by it but are close enough to be emotionally attached to its memory.230 Contemplating about this work, he asks:

(I)s it permissible to speak of healing, or even call for a “season for healing” in the context of the Holocaust? Can the wounds of the victims be healed? Can victimizers be healed, and if so, of what? Can memory be healed? 231

Krondorfer claims that post-Shoah generations have the power to initiate transformation but also explains that this transformation is easier if it happens collectively, supported in groups, since it is harder to individually challenge one’s family attitudes.232

Finally considered in this subsection is Paul Valent who believes that survivors have been able to heal the trauma of the Holocaust by confronting their traumas and allowing themselves to enjoy life.233 Noting that survivors have revisited the places of

Holocaust experiences, often with their children and grandchildren, he suggests that such visits help “disjointed memories and emotions to become coherent, communication to be more flowing, for grief to become unfrozen – for respects to be paid to perished loved ones, and unnecessary burdens such as survivor guilt, to be relinquished.” 234

Valent remarks that staying in the trauma of the Holocaust as if it was happening today is detrimental and unrealistic.235 He acknowledges that it is important to understand why the Holocaust happened which in turn can help with healing from it, as well as other crises and conflicts. Valent contends that the Holocaust’s lesson of “Never again!” has to be reinterpreted, saying that, “It cannot just mean ‘Never again!’ for us, but

‘Never again!’ for all.” 236 According to him, the Holocaust needs to be understood at a deep and ubiquitous human level. Valent points out that just as with other people who have been victimized, it is necessary to ask the question of why they were abused.237 To understand this question requires a degree of empathy with the perpetrator, though to do so does not excuse or justify the actions of the perpetrator. This understanding has been helpful to victims of domestic violence, sexual violation, and wartime atrocities who were then able to deal creatively and efficiently with the causes of aggression, abuse, and atrocities. He holds that, ultimately, those traumatized by the Holocaust may offer the world tools to understand the process by which innocent people are victimized, and teach its prevention.

It is important to acknowledge the practitioners that for decades now, have been using the arts and psychotherapy to process historical trauma. This study builds upon that lineage. However, there is insufficient research done on this study’s particular question pertaining to descendants’ imaginal structures, the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt, and cultivating authentic power. The methodology used in this study builds on the work done by Volkas and others as it uses drama therapy and expressive arts therapy techniques similar to what they use. However, a distinction is the methodology used. In addition to using psychodrama and drama therapy, this study also

78 uses practices from Imaginal Transformation Praxis which work with the emergent. The researcher pays close attention to what emerges in participants and in the group, follows what participants are feeling and where the group is at and encourages them to bring forth what is coming up in them in whatever form they want to or need to express it. In this way, instead of following a structured modality, the researcher opens the space for participants to spontaneously bring ritual and expression into the space. The spontaneous expression may involve one individual or the whole group. The fluidity helps deepen the work and the participants and the group go into a journey of transformation in many instances led by them.

Another difference between this work and that of others is the focus upon third generation. With a focus on descendants in general, and not specifically third generation, the unique voice of third generation is lost. Additionally, resources do not address transformative practices that third generation survivors might specifically engage.

However, the teachings about transformative practices in general can be applied to work with third generation survivors, and may strengthen or enrich practices tailored for third generation particularly in mind.

Cultural Practices of Ritual and Transformation

This next subsection explores the ways in which engaging in ecstatic cultural practices can be transformative. In particular, this section considers ways post-Holocaust

Jews are re-engaging with Jewish ecstatic practices and mythic imagination, especially through the Jewish Renewal movement. Writings from Fershtman explain how Jewish ecstatic practices and ritual can be powerful transformative and healing practices for

79 intergenerational trauma. Ilene Serlin, David Rosenberg, Yitzhak Buxbaum, and Shefa

Gold write about the power of Jewish ecstatic dance, sacred movement, chant, and song as pathways to the ecstatic and expanded states of consciousness. Resources from

Fershtman, Lawrence Sullivan, and Bettina Knapp discuss the value and significance among many cultures, including Judaism, of connecting with ancestors and its potential for bringing a sense of wholeness and protection. This subsection also includes a review of the Kabbalistic myth, Tikkun Olam, along with various interpretations. The myth is relevant to the study as it describes the process of personal and collective restoration.

This subsection is relevant to the research question because ecstatic practices and mythic imagination are ways of containing deep emotion and connecting with transpersonal forces that can bring a sense of union with the ancestors and others as well as supporting an individual’s integration of traumatic experiences.

From the 1960s until the present, the Jewish Renewal Movement has introduced formerly secular and non-practicing Jews to the depths of Jewish myths and symbolism as well as rituals and practices.238 Jewish Renewal was developed by Rabbis Zalman

Schachter-Shalomi, Shlomo Carlebach, and their students and colleagues.239 Given changing historical realities, they recognized that after the Holocaust there was a need for a paradigm shift in Judaism.240 According to David Cooper, the goal for the Movement is to bring vitality to Judaism, “to nurture its soul, deepen its spiritual content, open its heart to the needs of humanity, be relevant in the modern world.” 241

In the 1960s, Schachter-Shalomi, made the teachings of mystical Judaism available to people in such a way that perceived patriarchy, sexism, and exclusion of traditional Judaism were not barriers. Schachter-Shalomi’s (also known as Reb Zalman)

80 version of Jewish Renewal is based on Jewish mysticism and draws upon teachings from kabbalistic and Hasidic sources. Kamenetz notes that the movement is strongly influenced by feminism and ecological consciousness.242

Jewish Renewal focuses on engagement with Jewish mysticism and the ecstatic experience. Fershtman observes that “it is egalitarian, meaning that this movement acknowledges the presence of the Divine Feminine, while also welcoming the full participation of women.” 243 It allows people to develop their authentic expression, meanings, and relationship to Judaism and does not require people to compromise other identities such as those related to feminism, gay/lesbian, or diverse cultural experiences.

Jewish Renewal seeks to reach Jews who have rejected Judaism, are not actively engaged in Judaism, or were not raised with a Jewish education and in so doing, allow them to

“participate in a direct experience of the divine that is a central precept of mysticism.” 244

This movement may provide a gateway to the numinous and mystical aspects of Judaism through transformative practices such as ritual, prayer, meditation, chant, and movement.245 According to Fershtman: The experience of contacting the numinous in

Judaism may lead one to reclaim an identity that has been repressed or rejected for much of one’s adult life, and catalyze and subsequently guide one’s individuation process. By providing a direct experience of this Presence through practices facilitating ecstatic states,

Jewish Renewal appeared to provide its practitioners with a strong enough ballast to descend into an exploration of family histories of anti-Semitic trauma.246

Schachter-Shalomi states that Jewish Renewal is based on the teachings of

Hasidic mysticism, and similar to the initial Hasidic movement’s intention, seeks to make

Jewish ecstatic experience more readily accessible.247 It is thus helpful to consider the

Hasidic movement more closely here. Knapp writes that the founder of the Hasidic movement was Isreal Ben Eliezer, known as Baal Shem Tov.248 She notes that Hasidism answered the need for hope and healing that Eastern European Jews needed due to the centuries of persecution. Hasids focused on spiritual elation and joy rather than on earthly conditions. Baal Shem Tov valued joy over the rigid theoretical orthodoxy of the time.

According to Knapp, he believed that anybody could have direct experience of God’s luminosity and spiritual elation through dance, song, and meditation as well as the study of Hebrew texts. Says Knapp, Hasidism was the emergence of a “new religious consciousness based on love, joy and feelings of relatedness with God and with man.” 249

Knapp observes that Hasidism included the belief in the transmigration of souls, joy, hope, and faith.250 The belief in transmigration of souls provided a sense of emotional and historical continuity. She notes that, “The belief in the eternity of ancestral souls gave an archetypal foundation to the psyche.” 251 Feeling the presence of loved ones helped individuals feel protected from the oppression and terror of the pogroms era and helped them survive.

Jewish Renewal supports a spiritual practice that is grounded in what might be called a wholistic view that incorporates intellectual, affective, artistic, and mystical expression. According to Avram Davis, Jewish Renewal employs practices that allow participants to have felt bodily experience of union with divine consciousness.252

Fershtman notes that Rosenberg sees how Jewish culture, which appears so mournful, uses grief as a pathway to the ecstatic.253 Rosenberg remarks, “Kabbalistic prayer often reaches the realm of the ecstatic, incorporating all the poetic and magical techniques it can find to produce a higher art.” 254

Representative of the renewed interest in mysticism are writings from Buxbaum who reflects on the relationship between mysticism and joy.255 He remarks that God is everywhere and anyone that is God-aware will be filled with joy. He considers joy and

God-awareness to be states of expanded consciousness. Buxbaum explains that the

Hasidic Rebbes believed that a person who is God-conscious becomes joyful and on the other hand, a person who is joyful because of worldly joys and pleasures is close to God.

He emphasizes that “joy has tremendous spiritual power” and points to the example of the great Kabbalists who reached exalted mystical levels of joy as they performed the mitzvoth.256

In reflecting upon the possibility of being happy even while suffering, Buxbaum suggests that even when a person is suffering they can experience happiness by connecting with God because God is the world of joy.257 This world of joy means transcending the dualities of good and bad, pleasure and pain, worldly happiness and sadness. Everything that is good and bad comes from God. But since God acts only from love and goodness there is really nothing bad. According to Buxbaum, a person that is able to truly hold these beliefs enters another spiritual realm and experiences great joy.258

Buxbaum also reflects upon ecstatic dancing in Hasidism.259 He remarks that for the Hasidic dancing has always been essential as an ecstatic and mystical practice.

Buxbaum notes that through dance, the Hasidic pray as well as bask in ecstatic joy and that for them, “singing and dancing are to be before God.” 260 Rebbes composed prayers for followers to recite where they plead to God to be able to dance in ecstatic joy.

Chanting is also a practice incorporated by mystics. Writings from Gold provide exploration of the healing power of chant.261 Gold notes that through the practice of

83 chant one can activate the physical, emotional, the knowing and the spiritual levels of consciousness and become the vehicle for God's healing power. Chanting is an entrance into expanded states of consciousness. She observes that, “from those expanded states, we can have access to the fullness of our power to bless and to heal, both ourselves and others. The sacred words become the lanterns by which our inner treasures, the unique medicine that we each carry, may be revealed.” 262

Several sources are useful to this research about third generation descendants of the Holocaust even though they do not speak specific or exclusively about Jewish experience. Writing about the role of dance among oppressed people such as Jews,

African-American, and Native Americans, Anna Halprin notes the value of culture as she contends that marginalized peoples have danced to “assert the indestructible nature of their souls and their inalienable right to freedom in the face of brutality and slavery.” 263

Halprin observes that dance is an old medicinal and healing tradition that the medicine man, priest, or shaman used as a way to help people release tension and heal their physical and mental suffering.264

A resource that echoes the sentiment that there is value in culture is from Hugh J.

Vasquez. As indicated by the very title of his article, “La Cultura Cura,” which in

Spanish means “culture heals,” the author communicates the idea that culture can provide protection from involvement in unhealthy behavior and has the greatest potential cures for many social problems in an increasing diverse society.265

Offering further perspective along the line of value of culture, Sullivan writes that in indigenous cultures dialoguing with the ancestors is essential for healing and achieving wholeness.266 In these traditional cultures, healing the sick is achieved by invoking the

84 presence of the ancestors. Sullivan describes how in order to experience wholeness of body or of time they believe one “must work backwards in time.” 267 In studying cultures in Central Africa and South America, the author found that this state of wholeness is difficult to access in this modern world’s condition.268 In order to bring healing, Sullivan contends that images of wholeness be presented, which are “primarily images of a time which is no longer available, which can only be described in mythic terms, or can only be enacted symbolically through performances of rituals.” 269

Another author brings reflection back to Jewish culture and weaves together the significance of dance with discussion about her personal search for a meaningful spirituality. Serlin describes her search for an embodied spirituality and how she returned to Judaism to find it.270 She left Judaism because she did not find that it addressed her interests in the body and in spiritual life. Yet, after learning from other religions she became homesick and wanted to know if she could find the missing pieces in her own tradition. So she engaged in a process of return, with a new approach, questions, and keys. She wondered if there was a way within Judaism to “reach spiritual consciousness through the body.” 271

Serlin explains that in her search she found that Jewish spirituality can be carried in the body and can be transmitted through the generations.272 Dancing, she says, was one way that spirituality was expressed in her family. Her family would usually dance folk dances at gatherings and often expected Serlin to lead them. Her great-aunt shared with Serlin that her father used to be a chassan (cantor) back in Russia and that,

“Dancing and singing were his primary means to express devotion. When he was moved… he would jump up on the table, cover his face, and sing and dance with great

85 emotion.” 273 Additionally, when Serlin asked her great-aunt how she meditated, she started to dance around the living room. Serlin notes that without knowing any of this family history, she became a dance/movement therapist. She learned in the process of her training that there is enormous expressive, communicative, and healing power in movement, and that it originated in forms of healing older than modern psychology.274

Another valuable resource for this research comes from Fershtman’s dissertation which is a depthful exploration of the topic of healing intergenerational trauma through

Jewish Renewal spiritual practices. One of her findings is that healing intergenerational trauma is possible through use of ecstatic practices.275 Her study focused on “the impact of intergenerational transmission of trauma on Jewish identity and the role of Jewish

Renewal practices in healing intergenerational trauma and developing a positive Jewish

Identity.” 276 She further explored how sustained engagement with Jewish Renewal practices (which includes drawing upon Jewish myths, the sacred feminine, the shamanic, and the tradition of meditation, chant, and ecstatic states) provides a means to reclaim

Jewish identity and to reconnect with collective memory.277 The participants in

Fershtman’s research were 10 individuals who initially rejected and subsequently reclaimed their Jewish identity, some who were descendants of survivors of the

Holocaust or pogroms and some, not.278

Fershtman’s hypotheses proposed that by facilitating increased engagement with non-egoic states of consciousness through ritual, prayer, and meditation, the practices utilized in the Jewish Renewal Movement can provide a holding environment that can allow for emergence of repressed affect related to trauma.279 She states: “Sustained engagement with these states of consciousness supports the healing of imaginal structures

86 related to family and ancestral trauma and can facilitate psychological and spiritual development.” 280

A resource that Fershtman cites which is also valuable to this research is Barbara

Hammer who suggests that many Jews may unconsciously reject Jewish identity as a way of avoiding painful feelings.281 Hammer observes that the psychic pain caused by this identification may lead people to deny and avoid Judaism. As a defense to the pain,

Hammer noted that one may become numb to one’s personal and family legacy, and may also avoid ecstatic states or expanded consciousness that may be engendered by profound engagement with Jewish ritual.282

In her own work, Fershtman describes how participants’ families turned away from their family histories because their histories were too painful and, at the time, too raw to be metabolized or integrated.283 With this turn away came an inability and closing off to ecstatic aspects of communion with collective memory. Fershtman remarks, “As this bridge is rebuilt, we learn that what is transmitted from the ancestors is not just the legacy of trauma, but medicine that offers the healing so deeply longed for.” 284

Fershtman’s findings illustrate the significance of connecting to one’s ancestors as a way to heal intergenerational trauma. She observes, “The use of Imaginal Psychology to explore the potent lived experience of connection with one’s ancestors as a means of working through family structures of repressed anti-Semitic trauma responses, appears to offer a meaningful guide to working with intergenerational trauma in a group setting.” 285

Fershtman discusses at length the fact that reconnection to Jewish mythic imagination is a healing agent.286 She observed that participants in her study spoke mostly or entirely in the language of Jewish myths, symbols, and images. She believes

87 this connection to Jewish cosmology was another way for participants to have pride in the depth that Judaism can offer. Fershtman states, “As participants deepened into relationship with Jewish teachings, myths, and symbols, they were guided in the transmutation of limiting imaginal structures related to Jewish identity such as shame, internalized anti-Semitism, and inherited post-traumatic stress responses to Jewish material.” 287 Fershtman points out the significance of the fact that “Jewish mysticism is filled with powerful myths and symbols that potentiate depth structures in the psyche.” 288

Given the importance of myth in Jewish tradition, it is relevant to this research to include discussion about various myths in this Literature Review. According to Sanford

L. Drob, one of the Kabbalistic myths with the greatest and most lasting impact upon

Jewish religious practice is the myth of tikkun olam which includes the symbol of “the raising of the sparks.” 289 He notes that it was Rabbi Isaac Luria who gave special attention to this metaphor which has since then become a foundational concept in

Hasidism.290 Edward Hoffman writes that Luria was a Kabbalist who lived in Sefad,

Israel following the Jews’ expulsion from Spain during the Inquisition in the late fifteenth century. The way he understood the myth was that God, who once filled all Creation, withdrew His Presence so that Creation could unfold.291 Vessels were prepared to receive the Holy Light emanation, but the Light was too powerful and the vessels shattered. All of creation is now filled with the divine sparks of light, many of which are covered by the shards of the shattered vessels, which may occlude the sparks from view.

Integrating a Jungian perspective with reflection upon the myth, Drob illustrates how Jung’s understanding and meaning of the symbol of the spark is very similar to the

Hasidic interpretion of this myth.292 Drob notes that Jung’s interest in the symbol was

88 primarily centered in its appearance in Gnosticism, alchemy, and Christian theology.

However Drob argues, Jung’s interpretation is essentially Kabbalistic as he sees the raising of the sparks as a metaphor for psychological redemption as opposed to a Gnostic escape from the world of human existence.293

He notes that Jung makes a parallel between the Kabbalistic idea of God pervading the world in the form of soul sparks (scintillae) and the unconscious.294 Says

Drob, Jung recognized the image of the spark to be a symbol of the unconscious and parallels the psychoanalytic idea of the buried psychic or spiritual energy that must be freed and returned to its source. Furthermore, according to Drob, Jung believes the sparks are a symbolic expression of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.295 The spark, says Drobe, can also be understood as the “fire point” or burning passion that resides in the heart of humans which has potential for danger and/or panacea.296 Drob notes that

“Jung sees this panacea as a unification of the ego with the shadowy and repressed content of the unconscious mind.” 297 According to Drob, Jung regards the sparks as buried unconscious meanings or archetypes that can erupt into consciousness with powerful effect; and for the Kabbalists these sparks are “complexes of divine light that are entrapped in the nether realm of the “Other Side” and that must be released in order to repair the personality of both God and humanity.” 298 Given that generations of Hasidim have lived their lives according to teaching about the sparks of light, Drob remarks that

“the divinely appointed mission of each individual is to raise those sparks that reside within his own soul and that come his or her way in the course of a lifetime.” 299 In this way individuals are able to turn darkness into light and take part in Tikkun Olam.

Drob notes that for both the Hasidim and Jung, the psyche is intimately connected to the natural world.300 Thus Jung’s writings supported the Kabbalistic understanding that psychological redemption involves turning inward and outward so that the individual sees themselves as partners in the world’s completion and perfection. Drob states that the

Kabbalists understand the Breaking of the Vessels as a break between the masculine and feminine waters, which maintain the harmony of the worlds.301 According to the

Kabbalists, the task of humanity is to restore the broken vessels which would result in a new union between the masculine and feminine aspects of God.

According to Drob, Jung believes that the psychological equivalent of such transformations of chaos is a confrontation with one’s own unconscious.302 This process is necessary for psychological growth and Drob points out that after an experience of chaos an individual may go through various processes of healing, separation, and extraction.303 Drob notes that these integrative processes represent efforts to restore one’s own soul or theologically speaking, they represent the idea of perfecting God.

Drob’s view is that in order for humanity to become complete, the individual must come face to face with evil both within the deity and within his or her own soul. Only then can humankind perform those acts that unify the opposites, acts that are necessary to complete the world and God. He writes, “When the Holy One is reunited with his

Shekhinah, then Tikun Olam is achieved and the cosmic balance is restored.” 304

Discovering the roots of one’s soul, Drob remarks, is not a process that leads to the enhancement of one’s ego or fulfillment of personal desires; it is a process through which the person discovers their unique spiritual task in life.305 Drob contends that Tikkun

Olam involves the extraction of the divine light which is the very essence of “the good,”

90 as it can be achieved by humankind.306 But the complexity of the situation includes the fact that divine light is inside the pieces of the broken vessel which are the sources and substance of both matter and evil. The process of extraction requires a descent into the realm of evil. The goodness or liberated light comes out of the evil realm. This conception of Tikkun, notes Drob, parallels Jung’s thoughts on the Shadow.307

According to Howard Schwartz, the messianic era will arrive when the shattered vessels are restored.308 Howard Schwartz writes that psychologically, the Messiah represents the individuation process, an ongoing process represented by the experience of waiting for the Messiah; the messianic era represents a time when individually and collectively people will return to a state of wholeness.309 The coming of the Messiah is also understood as the advent of spiritually evolved consciousness.310 Traditionally, the

Messiah refers to a leader that is chosen by God who physically descends from the

Divine line to rule the united tribes of Israel and bring about global peace.311

Cultural ecstatic practices such as dancing, singing, and chanting have been part of Jewish religious practice for generations and have helped people hold deep emotion as well as embody and express spirit. These practices help people hold grieving while experiencing joy and thus help with the mourning process. It is also believed that engaging in such practices can be transformative, can help heal trauma of the world as well as individual personal trauma. This study addressed gaps in the literature by demonstrating how women third generation descendants move towards ecstatic practice to help them hold deep emotion and process imaginal structures related to the legacy.

There have been no previous studies that have considered the connection between Jewish mythic imagination, spiritual practices, and ritual as an inner resource for descendants of

91 the Holocaust. Although the initial intent of this study was not to explore this connection, given the course of events during the research, this study does shed light in this direction.

While Fershtman’s dissertation looked into how Jews could transform intergenerational trauma through engagement with ecstatic practices and mythic imagination, there are some key difference between her study and this one. Some of the ways that this study differs with hers is that this study focused on people that considered themselves to be third generation descendant of Holocaust survivors and that all the participants identified as women. Fershtman’s participants were not all descendants of

Holocaust survivors, and they were also diverse in terms of gender. Also different than her research, participants in this study did not necessarily have a Jewish spiritual practice.

Uncovering the Power of Divine Feminine

This subsection explores feminine archetypes and myths that represent the mother, feminine power, and the reclamation of the repressed feminine. One of these female figures is the Jewish female aspect of God known as the Shekhinah. Another

Jewish female archetype explored in this section is that of Lilith, the shadow side of the feminine. The myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal is another powerful story that holds the journey of the descent into suffering and the resulting transformation that happens. This latter myth is relevant to the topic and research question because, given the trauma, in order to enter into affective states and move towards authentic power, it is necessary to connect and bring forward the mothering other as well as those aspects of the feminine that allow entry into authentic states. Engagement with affective states can be an alternative to staying frozen as a result of trauma. Reclamation of the feminine is one way

92 to cultivate openness and surrender to the depths of experience and feeling while trusting that one can come up after dwelling there. Through such surrender and trust, transformation becomes possible.

First to be considered here is discussion from Judith Plaskow about the significance of women’s relationship to Judaism.312 She posits that in order for Judaism to be truly inclusive of women the religion needs to go through a radical transformation, different still than what Jewish feminist have already contributed.313 Plaskow notes that given that Judaism is a deeply patriarchal tradition, to change it will require a revolution.314 Plaskow comments on how already Jewish feminists have addressed and created changes around inequalities in Jewish life. However, she believes that equal access does not really address the needed structural change of integrating women’s experiences into Jewish life. She contends that the women that play roles as teachers, rabbis, and leaders continue to function within and help preserve a male religion. If women’s voices and experiences were really integrated, there would need to be a far- reaching and open-ended process of reformation within which women and men have a role in shaping the religion.315 Plaskow proposes that, “Only when those who have had the power of naming stolen from us find our voices and begin to speak will Judaism become a religion that includes all Jews - will it truly be a Judaism of women and men.” 316

Also acknowledging the necessity for inclusion of the Divine Feminine,

Fershtman proposes “that one of the richest areas of current revisioning is in understanding the meaning of the Divine Feminine and female archetypes in Jewish myth.” 317 She cites Raphael Patai’s publication, The Hebrew Goddess, which pointed

93 out that the sacred feminine has played a profound role in Judaism since its inception.

Patai notes that “the earliest observances of the sacred included worship of Asherah, the female consort of God. “ 318

Another of the earliest female archetypes or symbols in Jewish text is the

Shekhinah. Lynn Gottlieb explains that the term Shekhinah comes from the Hebrew root meaning to dwell or abide, and first appeared in third century rabbinic writings as one of the names of God.319 The term evolved from the word mishkan, which refers to the tent which the Israelites constructed to house the altar where God could dwell among the people when they were in the desert. After the destruction of the first Jerusalem Temple, it was believed that God’s presence continued to dwell among the people in exile.

Gottlieb notes that this presence became known as the Shekhinah, which was said “to accompany the people in exile and would appear to them whenever the people occupied themselves with the study of Torah or performed good deeds.” 320

Tracing later reference to this archetype, Melissa Raphael explains that thirteenth century mystical texts represented the Shekhinah as “the Bride of God,” “the Sabbath

Bride,” or as a princess or queen and also as a mother or daughter.321 Raphael states that by the seventeenth century, Shekhinah had been figured as a woman mourning for and comforting her people and by the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Hasidic theology portrayed her as “ suffer(ing) not only with the whole Jewish people, but with each

Jewish soul. Without her sharing their suffering, humanity could not endure.” 322

Additionally, Fershtman notes that “talmudic legend teaches that wherever there is a minyan, a group of 10 Jews, the Shekhinah is present.323

Schwartz observes that by the sixteenth century the concept of the Shekhinah was increasingly identified as the feminine aspect of God and portrayed as the Bride of God, the personification of the Sabbath Bride.324 He notes that according to myth, the

Shekhinah originally dwelled in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and went into exile with the Jewish people when the Temple was destroyed.325 According to Schwartz, as the companion of the Jewish people in exile, the Shekhinah was also in exile from God and her exile will end with the coming of the Messiah, when the temple will be rebuilt.

However, says Schwartz, on the Sabbath, she is joined in a wedding and coniunctio

(mystical union) with God, and we are able to experience states of the messianic era.” 326

Parallel to Jung’s concept of the Anima, the feminine aspect of every person, Schwartz conceptualizes the Shekhinah as an archetypal and mythic feminine figure which represents a missing element in the personal psyche, which we quest to restore.327

According to Schwartz, she also represents the collective “psychic dislocation” of the

Jews which was brought by their exile.328 Thus, the Shekhinah and the Messiah are both in exile, requiring us to find them and bring them forth into consciousness. Says

Schwartz, the union of the Shekhinah and the Messiah represents a tikkun (redemption or restoration), which occurs in the individual psyche and within the collective psyche simultaneously.329

Raphael notes that the understanding of the Shekhinah as the feminine aspect of

God symbolizing reunion and psycho-spiritual completion is different from the Jewish feminist position which accords Shekhinah the status of a divine subject.330 Raphael suggests that the Shekhinah bridges Jewish women’s spiritual past and future. The many female images associated with the Shekhinah can become a source for women’s

95 encounter with the divine today as well as a bridge to our past. She notes that women yearn for this possibility and “when women speak of God-She, we can finally picture ourselves as created in God’s image.” 331

Fershtman identifies the “Shekhinah as a symbol of the mothering other necessary for the metabolization of traumatic events.” 332 Noting that a mothering presence facilitates integration of profoundly painful material, Fershtman suggests that the Divine

Presence of Shekhinah can hold and accept all aspects of oneself that parents might not have been able to hold.333 She notes that this holding can be especially true in the cases of children of trauma survivors whose parents might not have been able to provide a nurturing environment. “In allowing oneself to feel held by a Divine Presence, profound healing is facilitated, as all aspects of the self are received without judgment.” 334

Lilith is another archetypal figure whose observance can be traced back to

Babylonian and Sumerian texts wherein, according to Siegmud Hurwitz, she appears as a chthonic goddess.335 Lilith is symbolic of repressed feminine power and represents the unconscious aspects devalued by the collective, including nature, mother, and earth.

Lilith does not appear in the Bible, but has been popularized through a ninth century midrash. In this depiction, according to Schwartz, God created a woman from the same earth from which it created Adam.336 Adam and this woman, Lililth, immediately began to fight. Adam wanted her to lie beneath him, but Lilith refused saying that since they were both created from the same earth, they were equals. When Lilith saw that they would never agree, she uttered God’s name and fled. Adam prayed to his creator saying that the she had left. God called upon three angels to bring her back. The angels found

Lilith who was living in a cave by the Read Sea, in the same place where Pharaoh’s army

96 would drown. They told her that if she did not agree to go back with them, they would guarantee the death of a hundred of her children each day. She refused to go with them and accepted her fate, ensuring the death of her children. From this arose the superstition that Lilith lurked to harm children. Parents of newborns place amulets with her name, and the names of the three angels, about their children’s heads to protect them from her. Lilith is also seen as a succubus who causes men to spill their seed in the night and also causing the birth of demon babies which she devours.

Gottlieb further expands upon story and meanings related to Lilith. She notes that the possibility for a descent story lies in the fragmented tales of Shekinah, Lilith, and Eve within Jewish storytelling traditions.337 Although Lilith is usually associated with Jewish legends, Gottlieb asserts that her story first appeared in cuneiform in 2300 BC in the

Inanna tale, where she represents an earlier aspect of Ereshkigal, the wounded sister.338

When Inanna first plants her tree in the garden, Lilith, a birdlike desert demon, sits in the crotch of the tree with her legs spread wide. Distressed at the sight of Lilith, Inanna cries for her champion, Gilgamesh, who banishes Lilith to the wasteland. Lilith flees when she witnesses Gilgamesh slaying the serpent, which is her companion.

Gottlieb notes that in the kabbala, Lilith is the negative side of the Shekhinah.339

Unlike Shekinah, who tries to keep herself chaste, Lilith whores about, trying to seduce the holy men of Israel into sin. Lilith and Shekinah never achieve reconciliation. One is doomed to banishment, and the other sits on the footstool at the feet of her husband king.

Writes Gottlieb, “Lilith and Shekinah remain polarized sides of the feminine persona and do not achieve integration or draw wisdom from their parallel existence.” 340 Suggesting other possibilities beside the kabbalistic interpretation, Gottlieb wonders what would

97 happen if Shekhinah assumes the role of Inanna and descends to meet her twin sister

Lilith who is calling from the depths. The author invites people to imagine their encounter and wonder what blessings they would receive from their subterranean sister.341

By posing such ideas, Gottlieb suggests that Inanna is another female archetype whose story is one of reclamation of female power and the repressed feminine.

The Inanna myth then is relevant in terms of its link to Jewish mythology as well as pertaining to feminine power. According to Sylvia Brinton Perera, Inanna learns of the her sister Ereshkigal’s husband’s death and decides to pay a mourning call.342 Drawing upon Perera’s telling of the story, Inanna’s journey is as follows: Ereshkigal had been raped and carried off by her underworld husband many years before. At the time of his death, Inanna puts her ear to the ground, which is the Sumerian way of saying she seeks wisdom. Queen Inanna adorns herself with ceremonial jewelry and clothing and begins her perilous journey downward. She places her female ally, Ninshubur, at the point of her descent, instructing her to seek help in case she does not return after three days. As

Inanna passes through the seven gates on her way to the underworld, she is forced to shed one of her protective garments at each gate. Finally, she arrives naked and alone before the stern gaze of her sister, Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, who promptly fastens the eye of death upon Inanna and hangs her corpse on a hook on the wall. After three days, Ninshubur obtains help from Inanna’s father, Enki, who dispatches two tiny spirit- helpers to assist his daughter in her plight. The diminutive size of these two creatures allows them to pass through the seven gates undetected. When they enter the throne room, they find Ereshkigal groaning over the dead. Ereshkigal is delighted with their empathic response and offers them a gift of their choosing as a reward. They request the

98 corpse of Innana. Although the queen tries to dissuade them, she eventually grants their favor and releases Inanna to the upperworld, revived and renewed.

Among the many interpretations and explanations of this myth that Perera offers, she remarks that Inanna sacrificed herself for earth’s need for life and renewal instead of humankind’s sins.343 Perera writes that Inanna “is concerned more with life than with good and evil. Nonetheless her descent and return provide a model for our own psychological-spiritual journeys.” 344 The author further comments that Ereshkigal is a reminder that many of the great goddesses suffer and do not avoid doing so; rather, they face it and express its reality.345 Such action is a sacrifice of activity which can lead even to rebirth and illumination when it is accepted as a way to let be.

Another perspective upon the Inanna myth comes from Ellen Becker’s comments on the poet, Enheduanna, who wrote the myth, in the 23 century B.C.346 According to

Becker, Enheduanna was writing about her own suffering, about her connection to nature and the ways that she was struggling. Becker says, “Here is Inanna in the same way trying so hard to restore herself.” 347 In going down, Becker explains, she had to become humble, suffer, and know death; going into a descent is a form of dying and in order to be renewed again we have to be willing to face that.

Another relevant Jewish female archetype is that of Miriam, the sister, the leader of women, not mother or wife, the one who is healed. Simcha Paul Raphael reflects on the emergence of the Miriam archetype in contemporary Jewish life.348 He refers to the passage in the bible following “Moses Song at the Sea” that describes how Miriam, the prophetess, took a drum in her hand and all the women went after her, drumming and dancing.349 Raphael notes that this scene in which women are celebrating together with

99 musical creativity, passion, and devotion has become a powerful image for contemporary

Jewish feminists. As women claim their power as rabbis, teachers, and ritual leaders, they have re-claimed the motif of the Prophetess Miriam as a strong woman leader, teacher, healer, and midwife. According to Raphael, the priestess archetype of Miriam is “arising in contemporary Jewish consciousness, reflecting the rebirth and awakening of the feminine psyche.” 350

Female archetypes can represent either the mothering qualities that can hold suffering as well as the underworld feminine force that has the capacity and power to be in grief, rage, and loss and the prophetess who is the healer and leader. Gaps in the literature point to ways in which women third generation descendants may invoke and connect with these feminine forces as a way to help them deepen their process of self- knowledge and transformation.

There are various techniques and forms that can help with the process of metabolizing and integrating historical trauma for third generation women. There is a lineage of therapists that have been working with survivors and descendants, but gaps in the literature pertain to how third generation descendants might use ritual, ecstatic cultural practices, and drama therapy to identify imaginal structures, express affect that they might not have expressed before and thus illuminate ways in which they are affected by the legacy and begin working through towards transformation and empowerment. The study also considers how female archetypes are invoked to help with this process.

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Conclusion

The first section entitled, “Understanding Survivor Guilt,” explained the concept of survivor guilt and how its definition and usage has evolved from first being applied directly to survivors of trauma to more recently being used to describe the experience of people with loved ones who suffer or suffered trauma in the past. As some authors explain, the way that survivor guilt may play out in someone’s life is that they may sabotage their lives, feel depressed, and not feel entitled to live a full life. They may feel that if they do have a full life they are betraying their family members or ancestors who suffered or are suffering. There is gap in the literature regarding how third generation descendants of the Holocaust might carry survivor guilt and how this generation may feel guilty about healing and recovering from the Holocaust. This study aims at understanding the ways that survivor guilt affects third generation descendants, including how the message they received that they need to carry the trauma instead of process it, might be limiting and oppressive.

The second section entitled, “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma,” includes an initial discussion of trauma and then provides explanation for how historical trauma may be passed down through the generations. Trauma is passed down through direct or indirect communication. Trauma that is not processed and digested by one generation is passed down to the next one. A generation might be locked in the trauma through gatekeeping mechanisms, cultural gatekeeping or internalized critical voices.

These critical or negative internalized voices can limit a person’s ways of being. A critical component needed to digest and process intergenerational trauma is to become aware and face these critical voices and cultural messages that have been passed down to

101 them. In this way descendants can begin digesting and disidentifying from imaginal structures that might be limiting or oppressive. There is no study done yet that specifically explores third generation descendants of the Holocaust and in particular women’s imaginal structures, gatekeeping, and the effects of facing these gatekeepers.

The third section entitled, “The Experience of Descendants of Holocaust

Survivors,” covered research, studies, literature, and films pertaining to the experience of second and third generation descendants of the Holocaust. The second generation has done a lot of inquiry into their experience and there is vast literature that speaks to their experience. One of the characteristics of the second generation is that they tended to hold the trauma for their parents who were overwhelmed by their experience and were unable to speak or process it. While trauma continues to be passed down through the generations

(as pointed out in the previous section), there are only a few research studies that have focused on the experience of the third generation. A significant resource is the work of second generation descendants who are therapists, drama therapists, and expressive art therapists who have led workshops with second and third generation descendants. This study evolves from their lineage but it differs in several unique and new ways involving participants’ use of ritual, ecstatic practices, imaginal psychology, and invocation of feminine energies to express and digest their experience.

This section provides a comprehensive review of the limited resources available pertaining to third generation descendants. There are clear gaps that have not been previously addressed and which this dissertation focuses on. No other research study has focused upon a group of third-generation women descendants. Another unique aspect of this study is that the researcher and co-researcher are third generation descendants.

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Through such exploration, this study adds information regarding the voice of the third generation in a way that has not been done before.

The last section entitled, “From Survivor Guilt to Authentic Power,” defined authentic power and covered the ways therapists and healing practitioners have been using transformative practices, ritual, and drama therapy to help people integrate and transform trauma and historical trauma. The section also gave an overview of the Jewish

Renewal movement and how it introduced post-Holocaust generations to the use of traditional ecstatic practices as a way to help heal historical trauma and re-connect to

Jewish mysticism in an inclusive, egalitarian, and eco-conscious way. Though not initially envisioned to do so, this study explores third generation descendants’ use of

Jewish Renewal practices as resources to help them process their experience. This section also reviewed various feminine archetypes that can also assist third-generation women descendants in metabolizing their experience. This study is unique in its consideration of third generation descendants moving towards these Jewish as well as universal practices

(including its use of Jewish archetypes) to help deepen and process their experience.

This study focused on the following Research Problem: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The current literature on third generation does not consider ways that this generation might carry survivor guilt and how they may carry guilt about recovering from the Holocaust, given the messages that have been passed down to them to carry the trauma. There is also controversy as to the impact of the

Holocaust upon third generation descendants. Although there are other practitioners who have worked with descendants of the Holocaust using transformative practices such as

103 drama therapy and expressive arts therapy, this study is different from what has been done in the past in the following ways: This study sought to support the expression of affective experiences and identify imaginal structures of third-generation women descendants by using a research design that allowed for participants to follow what was emerging for them, and encourage them to express it with spontaneity and fluidity. This research study differs from others in that it explores the unique ways that Holocaust affects third-generation women descendants, contributes to giving voice to the third generation, and identify ways to transform what has been passed down and might be oppressing them.

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CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

Introduction and Overview

The primary research problem this study asked was: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The research hypothesis was as follows: As affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power.

This qualitative research study was conducted within the framework of the participatory research paradigm. The methodological approach used was Imaginal

Inquiry, a research methodology developed my Omer, which includes four phases: evoking experience, expressing experience, interpreting experience, and integrating experience.1 In the evoking experience phase the researcher seeks to evoke the specific experience that is the topic of investigation. The researcher creates a scenario in which participants are likely to experience that topic. The next phase is expressing experience.

In order to capture data about how participants are affected, instead of having the participants talk about their experience, the researcher creates forms or structures for the participants to express how they are affected. The researcher can use expressive forms such as interviewing, journaling, art making, and expressive arts. The responses are documented through such methods as videotaping, audiotaping, journaling, or fieldnotes.

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In designing the forms for expression, the researcher has to be careful to not shape participants’ responses by asking leading questions. Once participants have experienced and expressed their experience the goal is to move into meaning-making about their experience. The researcher, the co-researchers as well as the participants complete this task. This data analysis is called the phase of interpreting experience and includes four steps of meaning-making: identifying key moments or “happenings” that occurred during data collection; responding to these moments through the practice of reflexive participation in collaboration with others; exploring differences and parallels in the researchers’ and participants’ responses; and finally making interpretations of the data by placing events of the research including convergences and divergences of responses within the context of theory and myth in order to contextualize them. Validity in the participatory paradigm is assured through careful consideration of the inter-subjectivity for all those involved in the field. This four-step approach to data analysis and meaning- making is well suited to participative research, as it builds upon the mutual participation and interactions of the participants and researchers who, together, inform the inquiry. The last phase of Imaginal Inquiry is the sharing of the Learnings with participants and the community. Participants can give feedback that the researcher takes into account. Once the researcher finalizes the Learnings this information is shared with wider audiences of professional and academic circles and perhaps the broader culture.

This study explored how third generation descendants of survivors of the

Holocaust are impacted by the legacy of that event within their family and culture. The literature explains that trauma may be passed down through the generations via messages and affects that create certain affective experiences and imaginal structures for the

106 descendants.2 Part of the experience of intergenerational trauma can be survivor guilt as experienced by third generation descendants.

This study created a space for third generation descendants to come together and explore how they are affected by the legacy of the Holocaust. It was a step towards processing and metabolizing the trauma that has been passed down to them. Many of the participants had never explored their Holocaust story with others in a group setting. None of them had done this kind of work with only third generation descendants. Most of the participants heard stories directly from their grandparents about the elders’ Holocaust experiences. A unifying thread between the participants’ stories is that family members shared stories but stayed away from the feelings, especially grief and anger. Many of the participants had not explored the depth and immensity of affect that was present but unatended in the intersubjective field of family life. Feelings such as grief and anger were repressed, while participants noticed that their relatives were more comfortable verbalizing fear and terror.

This study aimed to provide an opportunity for third generation descendents to feel the affects that had not been consciously named and directly expressed in their families. The creation of a community with a similar history and the ritualization of space allowed for this to happen. Another aim of this study was to identify and work with unique messages that third generation descendents received related to this historical trauma. The study aimed at looking at the messages, especially those that would evoke guilt. Considering such messages could then lead to finding out how third generation might feel guilty and what they might feel guilty about in relationship to the Holocaust and their families and ancestors.

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I opened up the space for participants to share how they were affected in the moment. I welcomed participants to follow what they were feeling, including any images that they noticed and encouraged them to share them with the group. The sense of community that was palpable from the very beginning allowed participants to notice and explore deep feelings and thoughts in ways that they had not done so before. As material arose I followed the lead of the participants and deviated from the plan that I originally had for the morning. In this way, I stayed with the affect and what participants needed in the moment. Participants used many ways of expressing their experiences of grief, rage, and joy. I followed their suggestions for activities such as a form to express anger, as well as dancing and singing to hold the joy and the grief. Before the lunch break the group gathered in a close-knit circle and, while holding each other, shared how they were feeling towards each other as a result of what had happened during the morning. After lunch, I invited participants to listen to me while a recited Mary Oliver’s poem, “The

108 making the participant feel guilty. To her surprise, when she spoke as the grandmother, the grandmother spoke as the Friend. This psychodrama opened a conversation among participants about the various messages they had received related to the Holocaust, including the impact upon gender roles and Jewish identity. One of the last activities participants engaged in was a ritual in which they each sent a message to their ancestors and future generations. This ritual allowed participants to speak from their own empowered and unique voice. The participants wished for themselves, the future generations, and also their ancestors to be free from survivor guilt, from the burden of the trauma, and to have permission to transform and live a good open life without remaining captive to the effects of the trauma. At the close of the day together, participants wanted to end with a song. Led by one of the participants, we sang the Jewish song, El Na Refa

Na La, which means “please heal this one,” as we held each other and gave appreciations.

Before the day ended, I asked participants to journal about their most powerful moment of the day and the meaning they made of that moment. As participants answered journal questions, they expressed how they were affected, identified key moments, and shared what surprised them. The group was videotaped and I transcribed the data paying particular attention to the deeper meaning of the stories, the affective experiences, and the group sharing. Reflecting upon all the data materials, there emerged meanings about what happened and how we were affected. My interpretive lens was based in literature related to intergenerational trauma, post-Holocaust trauma among second and third generation, general psychological literature on survivor guilt, and the role that ritual, drama therapy and the expressive arts can have in helping heal from individual and collective trauma.

Since validity is established in the participatory paradigm by accounting for all aspects of

109 the inter-subjective field, I met with my co-researcher so that we could together explore our own imaginal structures that may have affected our ability to account for the experiences that occurred.

As part of the integrating experience process, I mailed my final Summary of

Learnings to participants which may have helped them assimilate their experience of being in the study.

Co-Researchers

I enlisted the help of two co-researchers to assist me on the day of the research as well as later in the interpreting experience phase. Both were cohort classmates at

Meridian University, Terri Aspen and Jessica Cohen. Jessica is also a third generation descendant of Holocaust survivors who recognizes that she is very affected by the

Holocaust legacy. For health reasons, Jessica was not able to attend the day of the data gathering. Because she had a last minute emergency, it was too late for me to find a replacement. However, after the meeting with participants, I was able to share some of the data with Jessica and draw upon her responses and reflections.

My second co-researcher, Terri, is not Jewish. She is compassionate and reflexive with strong experience in group facilitation. I thought that the combination of having someone close to the topic such as Jessica and someone more culturally removed from it, such as Terri, created a good balance and combination. Because Terri had more perspective, she was key in helping me hold the group with logistics and was able to reflect back to the group and myself how important the space was for all of us and how she could sense the reality of the impact of the Holocaust on our generation. She

110 validated participants’ experiences. The difference between imaginal structures of Terri and myself allowed for accountability and validity.

Limitations and Delimitations

Because the study took place in Berkeley, the location limited the study to those residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. This influenced the study in that a particular

Jewish culture exists in the Bay Area that may differ from Jewish cultures in other areas.

Participants in the study had very diverse experience of how they were raised in relationship to their Jewish identity and therefore in relationship to the Holocaust. Many of the participants had previous experience with expressive arts therapy and ritual and therefore felt comfortable diving into these forms and expressing themselves freely.

These practices involving art therapy and ritual are more common in the Bay Area than in other parts of the country or the world. I also required that the participants have at least one year of experience with therapy and that they be open to expressive arts and drama therapy. This requirement may have supported better access to data because participants might have more awareness and capacity for working with their affective experiences.

The time constraints of the study were an issue. For example, I was only able to work directly with one participant using psychodrama. In retrospect I believe this study would have benefitted by being two days long instead of only one, which would have allowed exploration of guilt more fully and widely among participants.

The group size was limited to eight to 10 participants. Although a small group may have limited the generalizability of the data, this group size facilitated more safety and containment and allowed more time for each participant to enter deeply into their

111 own experience and share it more fully with the group. The research day was videotaped.

While videotaping can inhibit participants it also gave the sense that their experiences are important, which could have led them to open up and deepen their participation.

I did not limit the participation only to women. However, mostly women responded to my call for participation in the study. It could be that some of the Learnings are only applicable to women’s experiences. It is very possible that if men participated in the study, the experience and Learnings would be different. However, the fact that the group was only women may have allowed the women to feel safer and therefore share more deeply and fully. Much of what was shared was related specifically to women’s experiences of post-Holocaust trauma. It would be very interesting to do another study with only male third generation descendants as well as a mixed group to compare and contrast the experience and the Learnings.

Participants

This study focused on the experience of third generation descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. For this study, survivors are defined as participants’: grandparents or their close family members who were in concentration camps; grandparents or their close family members that were in hiding in Europe during the Nazi regime of the 1930s and

1940s; grandparents or their close family members that fled to other countries before or during World War II; or grandparents or their close family members who perished during the Nazi regime.

There are various reasons why I chose to focus the study on this particular population. Much research has been done with second generation descendants. According

112 to the literature, there is controversy as to whether and how much the third generation is affected by the Holocaust. The third generation is in a unique place and can have a specific role that survivors and second generation do not have. They are farther away from the events, but close enough to be affected. They may have a special and unique relationship to their grandparents quite different than their parents had with their own parents. Therefore, the contribution of third generation descendants to the processing and metabolizing the trauma and survivor guilt is incredibly valuable and important. The purpose of this research study was to look at these issues which so far has not been done.

In particular, this study aimed at shedding more light on the discussion of the impact of the Holocaust on third generation and how they can move from survivor guilt and trauma into authentic power and what it would take for that generation to be able to do that.

The initial plan was to include males and female participants but those that responded to the research announcement were all women. The group consisted of eight women varied in age, sexual orientation, marital status, and career. Participants ranged in age from their later 20s to early 40s. There were five heterosexual and two lesbians. All participants had college degrees and several were in master level programs. Several of them are teachers, one of them is studying to become an expressive arts therapist, one was starting a Ph.D. program in cultural anthropology, and one is a scientist.

The fact that all participants, including the researcher and co-researcher, were women created a special dynamic that it is possible would not have happened if the group was mixed or if it had been a group of only male participants. The fact that the group was all women may have facilitated the sense of safety, bonding, and community that

113 happened. It also gave the participants an opportunity to explore the particular experience that they have as women third generation descendants.

Despite the shared experience of being women and third generation descendants there was a wide diversity between the participants in terms of their Jewish identity,

Holocaust family story, and previous exploration of their relationship to the Holocaust. In terms of their Jewish identity, some of the women were active participants in Jewish

Renewal while on the other hand some of the women grew up in households where one parent was Jewish and one was not so and they did not grow up identifying as Jewish.

Some women had a strong Jewish upbringing and Jewish identity but were not currently practicing the religion and were trying to explore other practices. Some of the women are trying to re-claim their Judaism because it was absent in their families. In terms of the

Holocaust family stories there was a spectrum of experiences where at one end of the spectrum some participants grew up with the Holocaust being very much part of their daily life and family experience and stories. At the other end of the spectrum, one woman did not hear much about the family’s history with the Holocaust but was in the process of learning and reclaiming her family story. In terms of the participants having explored their relationship to the Holocaust previous to the research gathering, there was a spectrum of experiences including some who had explored it more than others. The diversity of experience in terms of the Jewish identity, Holocaust stories, and relationship to the Holocaust gave this group of women an interesting opportunity to model for each other raw emotional reactions on the one hand to more thought out and self-aware (a person that had thought a lot about it but actually had not been able to feel.) Some women were more emotionally-oriented and others were more analytical and intellectual. The

114 balance that happened in the study from raw emotion to analysis could have been due to the diversity of personality with some women more emotionally expressive while others are more intellectual and analytical. These ways of reacting in the research may also have been due to their own personal and family experiences with the Holocaust and how much they had explored it.

Another demographic requirement for the study was that participants needed to have at least a year of individual or group psychotherapy. Because we used several drama therapy exercises, experience with drama or drama therapy was preferred but not required.

The process of choosing the final eight participants consisted in the following steps. The study consisted of initial outreach through e-mail and distribution of fliers of the Participant Search Announcement to various Jewish religious and education institutions as well as Jewish community centers, to educational institutions and clinical agencies that offer drama therapy and expressive arts therapy, and to already formed groups that worked with survivors and descendants of survivors of the Holocaust in the

San Francisco Bay Area, and nationally (Appendix 5). I phoned individuals who expressed interest and asked them a couple of questions to determine if they were suitable for a longer in-person interview meeting (Appendix 6).

If the person was a potential candidate I scheduled a one - hour meeting in person.

The interview meeting took place at the Living Arts Counseling Center, a center that offers drama therapy and expressive arts therapy to the community and where its director

Armand Volkas facilitates Healing The Wounds of History workshops. During the interview, I asked participants about their interest in participating in the study, their

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Holocaust family history, their own relationship to the legacy of the Holocaust, and their relationship to Judaism. I also asked them whether they had had psychotherapy and/or group process experience and about whether they were comfortable with role-playing and expressive arts and whether they would feel comfortable participating in the study.

Participants were advised of the possible risks they were undertaking by engaging in the study and I told them that on the day of the research they would sign an informed consent form (Appendices 7 and 4).

Once I selected the eight participants, I contacted all of the people to tell them whether they were selected or not (Appendices 8 and 9). A few weeks prior to the research study I sent an email to the eight selected participants about logistics and what items they needed to bring to the group meeting, including an object or an image that spoke to their connection to the Holocaust.

In choosing the final eight participants I took into consideration the criteria mentioned above. Participants had to identify themselves as third generation descendants.

It was also important that participants felt comfortable working in groups as well as with techniques of expressive arts and drama therapy. I was also interested in working with a spectrum of people in terms of their relationship to Judaism and Jewish identity.

Therefore some of the participants identified closely with Judaism and others had had limited exposure to Judaism. In reflecting back on my process, given the pressures that I had growing up to be Jewish and to stay within the Jewish community, I was drawn to include participants that came from families where they did not experience the pressure to be Jewish. I wanted to be more inclusive. Two of the participants had one parent that was not Jewish and were not brought up necessarily Jewish.

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Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry

Phase One: Evoking Experience

The group meeting began with an overview of the study and participants signing the Informed Consent Form. Participants were encouraged to trust their own experience, take care of themselves emotionally, and told that if they needed individual attention, they could reach out to the researcher or co-researcher. The group was instructed that participation in the exercises was voluntary. These guidelines were meant to evoke a feeling of safety and encourage participants to trust their own experiences and take care of themselves.

After this initial check-in, the group was guided through several drama therapy warm-up exercises. These improvisational warm-up exercises allowed participants to learn each other’s names, express how they felt in the moment, build safety and connection, and begin warming participants up to the use of expression and improvisation that was to happen throughout the day (See Appendix 10 for detailed script).

As part of the first series of drama therapy exercise was “Role Playing” and “Role

Playing Through Line Repetitions.” For the first exercise, participants were asked to pair off and interact with a partner by taking on various roles given to them. This activity prepared the group for role-playing and activities that had emotional charge. In the second exercise, each participant in the dyad was given a line they needed to repeat over and over again. They interacted with each other saying their line and were instructed to notice how they were affected. The pair of lines that were assigned to them were: “Please

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– No”; “You hurt me – I am sorry”; “I have to go – Please stay”; “Yes – Yes”; “I am so happy – And what about me?” Next, participants were instructed to develop the last set of lines into a scene. These exercises were an effective way to evoke the core and essence of many interpersonal interactions, including some of the dynamics of survivor guilt.

Because there is a certain protection within the role, the exercises can be useful in giving people an opportunity to try things out. Participants might work through issues in the cover of a role which is evocative and safe at the same time.

After the drama therapy warm up exercises the group sat in a semi-circle around a table that had white candles on it. Participants participated in an ancestral ritual during which they shared the story of how the Holocaust impacted their families and themselves.

One by one participants were invited to share the object or image they brought that represented their own or their family relationship to the Holocaust and tell their family and personal story. As they did so, each participant placed the object on the “ancestral table” and lit a candle. The candles remained lit throughout the day.

This ritual evoked deep emotion among participants. Because of this I decided to change my plan and opened the circle so that participants could express with the group how they were affected by the stories and how they were feeling in the moment. Much of what participants shared in the stories was how affect was repressed in their families, especially when it came to talking and sharing about the Holocaust. The women talked about how they felt there was a thread connecting their stories which was that among their families they could not express grief or rage about what had happened. They saw their grandparents resist the feelings. I decided I wanted to break the cycle they were talking about so that we were not again just telling the stories without a space to feel and

118 express the affect that the stories evoked. I invited participants to share their feelings and thoughts. Several things happened as I opened this space and followed the images that were coming up and supported the group to tend the needs of each moment. First, the women shared individually by stepping inside the circle and expressing emotion or thoughts. At one point one of the women thought it would be good if the group danced horas (circle dance). So the group danced horas. Later, one of the women introduced an exercise based upon a sentence stem, “I am angry that…” which provided a forum for some of the women to express anger.

These activities happened instead of the planned activity “Message of the

Holocaust.” This exercise was going to involve the participants identifying and diagramming the messages about the Holocaust and tracing the origins of these messages from others, whether dead or alive or whether from individuals, small or large groups.

Once participants identified the messages, I was going to work with a volunteer and create a psychodrama with the group.

After lunch break I recited by memory the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver

(Appendix 12). I had planned to have participants journal individually about each line of the poem as I recited it again and then to do some artwork to illustrate the emerging voice that they found responding to the poem.

However, again the plan changed because some of the participants were very affected by the poem. Instead of the planned poetry activity I decided to do a psychodrama with the participant that was most affected. We created a structure in which she spoke with her grandmother. The participant chose two women to play her and her grandmother. The gatekeeper and Friend voices were also teased out.

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For the last activity of the day participants came back to the ancestral table and sat around it in a semi-circle. I asked them get up one by one and address the ancestors by speaking to them and sending them a message. After they spoke to the ancestors, I guided them to turn around towards the semi-circle and address the future generations by sending them a message.

For the closing of the day participants requested that we sing a song. One of the participants led the group in a Jewish chant, El Na Refa Na La, which means “please heal this one.” This chant evoked and held the various emotions of the day and captured the group’s desires.

Phase Two: Expressing Experience

The study began with a series of drama therapy and improvisational warm up exercises. Participants expressed with voice and movement how they were feeling. After a series of role plays where participants expressed from a given role, participants were invited to journal and answer how they were affected by the role plays (Appendix 11).

Following the journaling the group was invited to share verbally their reflections on participating in the role plays.

Following the warm up exercises participants were invited to participate in a ritual to share their personal and family Holocaust experiences. While participants shared objects and images related to their stories, they were brought to tears. After the group shared the stories and lit candles for each of their ancestors, participants were invited to enter into the middle of the circle and share how they were feeling and how they were affected by the stories. This change of plan from the original research design allowed

120 participants to express deeply held emotions that they had not been able to feel and express before. Participants expressed grief, loss, rage, pain, and gratitude. After one of the participants expressed feeling the need to dance horas (Jewish circle dance), the group danced and expressed joy and grief as they did so.

After dancing, the group moved into expression of anger. One of the participants led the group into an exercise involving expressions beginning with the sentence stem, “I am angry that….” During this exercise some expressed intense rage followed by sadness.

Most of the group was engaged and stimulated by the exercise.

Before the lunch break participants sat and gathered closely in a circle and expressed verbally how they were feeling from the morning session. During lunch, the group sat in a circle and went around sharing with each other about their personal lives.

After lunch break recited the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. The plan according to the original research design was that after I delivered the poem I would give participants a handout to create their own poem by adding lines to the original poem. I decided to change this initial plan, given that some of the participants expressed being very affected by the poem, one of them sobbing heavily. I developed a psychodrama with her involving an imaginal dialogue between her and her grandmother. She expressed guilt and shame as herself and as her grandmother she responded with empathy and support.

After the psychodrama I asked participants to gather in a circle and share with the group how they were affected by what they witnessed. The group was instructed to only share from their personal story about how the story of the psychodrama was similar or different to their experiences. Those who played a role in the psychodrama were asked to

121 also share from their role about what came up for them as the particular character they played.

As one of the closing activities, participants were asked to express a message to their ancestors and to the future generation. Expressing deep emotion, one by one participants went towards the ancestral table and delivered a message to the ancestors and then to the future generations. Several participants were moved to tears, others to laughter.

Before the closing circle, I asked the group to complete a questionnaire which provided an opportunity for participants to express in writing how they were affected by the day and what their most powerful moments were and why (Appendix 13).

The closing circle consisted of appreciations while the group was led by one of the participants in a Jewish chant, El Na Refa Na La. Participants expressed deep appreciation for each other and the work they did that day.

After the data gathering meeting, I emailed participants a follow-up questionnaire asking them to express the ways in which they were affected by their participation as well as what message they would send to third generation descendants. Three out of the eight participants responded to this questionnaire (Appendix 14).

Phase Three: Interpreting Experience

Soon after the research day, I met with my co-researcher and we shared our feelings, reflections, insights, and key moments from the day. I then personally transcribed the videotapes of the meeting, carefully paying attention to the participants’ affects, the group’s responses to the sharing and to the overall inter-subjective field. I

122 made note of significant moments in the study and began to tease out themes that emerged. I reviewed the video footage as well as the written transcripts of the videotapes many times, noting the key moments where there was significant affect and meaning. I also reviewed the responses to the questionnaires.

Once I organized the material into potential Learnings, I met again with my co- researcher. She offered her thoughts and feelings to the material. We discussed our imaginal structures and how our similarities and differences may have affected the way we each responded to the data.

I then began to interpret the material through a lens based on sources included in the Literature Review pertaining to intergenerational trauma and the experiences of post-

Holocaust second and third generation descendents. In order to better understand and interpret some of the Learnings that were emerging I did further research on Jewish cultural practices of ritual and transformation, and theories on how ritual, drama therapy, art, and expression help people process historical trauma. The largest story of the participants’ journey was contextualized in myths including the descent of Inanna, the myth of Lilith, and the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam.

Phase Four: Integrating Experience

During the research day, various modalities were used to facilitate the participants’ integration of experience. These included journaling and verbally reflecting with the group which allowed participants to process the experience evoked during the various exercises and at the end of the day. There were various group sharings where participants reflected how they had been impacted by certain activities. At the end of

123 morning session, just before lunch, participants made space to talk about how they were feeling from the morning. This helped them integrate the intense emotional experience that had been created in the morning. It also allowed participants to feel held by the group.

During lunch, participants did yoga and shared more about their personal lives.

This break helped participants integrate intense emotional affect that had been evoked in the morning, as well as continue learning more about each other.

Following the ancestral stories, participants were invited to share and express how they had been affected. This sharing which included expression, dancing, and reflection which helped the group integrate what had been evoked when they shared their Holocaust family stories. Sharing after the psychodrama also helped participants integrate what they witnessed in the psychodrama.

At the end of the day, just before the closing circle participants were given a questionnaire which included the invitation for them to write how they were affected, what surprised them, and the meaning that they made about the most powerful moments of the day.

For the closing activity participants asked if we could sing a chant. One of the participants led the group in a Jewish chant while each person had a chance to share appreciations for themselves, each other, and the group.

The final Summary of Learnings were mailed to all participants. The completed dissertation will be available to all participants at their request. I will also share the

Learnings with the psychological community, Jewish communities, and other communities that have experienced historical trauma, or are working with

124 intergenerational trauma. I plan to do so by writing an article that summarizes my research, Learnings and significance of the study. My purpose is to publicize the article in publications within the psychology community, the Jewish community and other relevant publications that address potentially interested populations. I would also like to use my

Learnings as a way to develop workshops for descendants of historical trauma. I am also considering creating a new ritual performance that incorporates the stories and the

Learnings from this study that I can share with the general public via theater.

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CHAPTER 4

LEARNINGS

Introduction and Overview

Cumulative Learning: Diving Deep and Emerging with New Possibilities

This research study led to the following Cumulative Learning: When third- generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered to explore and give voice to their experience, they processed the conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the family and broader community, and communitas was created which brought healing about these experiences. Third generation descendants are in a position to digest and recover from the Holocaust when given the opportunity to do so, and communitas can support this process. Commonly third generation descendants experience pressure to carry Holocaust trauma both in order that the Holocaust never be forgotten and also to relieve earlier generations. They might feel guilty about recovering from the

Holocaust. Such a burden creates conflict for them in ways that limit them. When the participants were able to explore and express their experiences, they processed the

126 conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the community and families. Some of these roles and expectations may be to marry, have children, and carry on the Jewish tradition; to be the carriers of the trauma; and be the lineage bearers.

Recovering from post-Holocaust trauma includes processing these pressures so third- generation women descendants do not act from guilt but instead from an empowered place.

This Cumulative Learning is based upon four major Learnings that are detailed in this chapter. Those Learnings are as follows: The first learning, entitled “Stripping

Naked,” states as follows: When the participants, third-generation women descendants of

Holocaust survivors, gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their

Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Meeting with other third-generation women gave participants a sense of safety to open up and meet shadow aspects that they had not explored before. The fact that there were such unexplored experiences mined is an indicator of the importance of providing a space for third generation to process their own experience.

The study revealed that, in fact, the third generation is very much affected by the

Holocaust. Being together as a group which allowed them to be held, mirrored, and encouraged, helped to allow unknown and repressed aspects of their experiences that needed to be met and expressed to come forth. Through this process transformation began to unfold.

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The third Learning, entitled “The Helpers: Emergence of the Friend in the Form of the Ancestors,” states as follows: Through engaging with the Friend in the form of voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Third generation descendants might perceive the ancestors not as supportive of their lives or they may feel guilty for having a better life than their ancestors. The study revealed that when the ancestors were engaged in imaginal dialogue, they revealed themselves to be allies instead of saboteurs. The ancestors, on the contrary, are their allies instead of their saboteurs. Connecting with the ancestors and asking for their support can help third generation heal and transform.

The fourth Learning is entitled “Re-emergence through Re-joining Community:

We Laughed and Cried at the Same Time,” and states as follows: When third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women. Participants connected to practices that the ancestors have done in the past to help them hold grief and joy. These practices helped participants feel a sense of community that they needed to be able to let go, to feel and express, and integrate what they were experiencing.

Learning One: Stripping Naked

This learning states: When the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors, gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their

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Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Though the women had talked about their experiences in other contexts, the meeting for this research was the first time that most of them had the opportunity to share with their own group. That they were able to come together specifically as women third generation descendants allowed them to see more of the commonality of their experience and find comfort and safety in that. This paved the way for deeper work to follow.

What Happened

In the first part of the morning, the group created an altar. We sat in a semi-circle around a table with white cloth and white candles, one for each participant. I asked participants to share, one by one, the objects and images they brought and to speak about their family’s experience with the Holocaust. They also talked about how the Holocaust impacts them.

The first woman who shared was “Hannah” (pseudonym).1 Even though she was not able bring the actual picture, she shared about the image that her dad drew when he was 19 years old. The picture, she described, is very beautiful at the top. It was drawn with fine point pen. The top is in black and white and there is a boat with a big knife on it. On the side of the boat is the word Lodz, the name of the camp where her father’s father was interned from in Poland. There is blood dripping down. At the bottom, there are faces of her great-grandmother, great-grandfather, and a child. “These are very sad faces,” she said, “It’s a very horrifying picture and it hung in my dining room growing up. I would sit there on Shabbat staring at it. It’s very graphic with the blood.”

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Her grandfather grew up in Lodz, then moved to Germany, and became a German citizen. He had a wife and two young sons. They all went to Auschwitz. There, he saw his wife and two sons killed in front of him. He was given special privileges because he was big and strong and he a good worker and he spoke German. When the war ended, he was an 80-pound survivor. He came to the United States because his brother was here. He then met his wife, had Hanna’s uncle, and then her father.

Hanna shared, “My grandfather was a very quiet man but would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. My father is also calm most of the time but he has these very horrific angry outbursts. It was hard.” Her father knew that one of her grandfather son’s was named Simon but he did not know the other. Her grandfather did not talk about them. When Hanna’s mother was seven months pregnant with her older brother, two years older than her, her grandfather hanged himself. Her grandmother found him and she went crazy. Hannah commented, “She was already kind of crazy, so she went completely senile. It was this huge family secret. I found out when I was 14 years old, when I saw his death certificate.” They had hidden it from everybody because she explained, “he was a

Holocaust survivor. The rabbis were hush, hush about (it) because they thought he was in

Auschwitz, he killed himself so he wasn’t in his right mind.” Hanna explained that the

Holocaust was always very present in her life. She shared that her father was obsessed with it, had a library with books about it, and talked about it consistently. When she was eight, Hanna saw “Europa Europa.”

At the end of her sharing, Hanna said, “this picture that my dad drew symbolizes the presence of the Holocaust in my life, very vividly, and I am sad that had to happen,

130 and I am happy that it lives still, through me and the work that I am doing in graduate school. So metaphorically, I put this picture on the table.”

“Esha” (pseudonym) spoke next. She brought a big, framed, black-and-white picture of her grandmother as a young adult. She called her Oma, which in German means grandmother. Esha shared that her Oma, who passed away in 2007, was her connection to the Holocaust. Esha brought the program from her Oma’s memorial services to share with the group. Esha told that in 1928, Oma had moved to New York with her two sisters and parents. Oma’s father had been placed in a concentration camp but Esha explained that she heard wishy-washy stories that her great-grandmother, very smart and quick, had figured out a way to get him out of the camp; then they all came to

New York. Esha said, “This is sort of all I have except for the program I have here from her memorial services. I’ll pass these around. I think that is very symbolic to me because of the little I have inherited in terms of the stories and reality of all of it, and yet there is so much that I inherited I think.” Esha laughed.

In her early adolescence Esha’s Oma had to stop going to the school in Germany, then their business was taken away, and then she was uprooted. She had to start over when at 18 years old she moved with her family to the United States. Esha thinks that her

Oma had a very healthy happy childhood, “which is not very common,” she said. Esha’s family talked about her Oma as a fabulous, open minded, go-getter woman who broke social norms. Esha shared, “She didn’t finish high school because of the war, if there are ifs, what if the war had not happened? I think she would have been a healthy person but she ended up marrying my Opa.” Her Opa had all sorts of trauma, and ended up sexually molesting both of her aunts and abusing Esha’s father. Esha comments, “My Oma, of

131 course, was in denial about the trauma from the Holocaust, having to redefine and restart her life over in a new country, didn’t talk about and didn’t process much this trauma and even then, so that is how my father and aunts were raised.” Esha let out a big sigh and looked down. She appeared sad.

“Arya” (pseudonym) followed Esha. She had teary eyes and had a hard time making eye contact with others. She held a big, framed, black-and-white photograph of her large family that was taken in Europe before the war. “It’s hard to know where to start,” she said. “I am the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors.”

Her grandfather survived the concentration camp, Treblinka, and found Arya’s grandmother in the woods where she was hiding, being helped by a Polish family. Arya and her family are still in touch with that Polish family. Arya’s mother’s mother had been married and had a child who was shot in the woods. “I grew up with a lot,” she said.

“Being by far the first grandchild, there was a lot put on me: I was success, I was the family survivor.”

Arya showed the picture that she brought and stated that she had a lot of pictures from the time because they started trying to create a history. Arya shared that she did not like the one she brought because everyone was solemn but it was the only picture of her great-grandparents. Arya had a list her mother made of who all the people in the picture were. Almost none of them survived. “The part that gets me is this,” she said in relation to the picture. “There is the row of kids on the front and one survived… and that is really hard to see.”

Arya brought a couple of other pictures. One was of her mother’s parents, who were at the DP camps. “They are probably in their early twenties and they look happy,”

132 she said. Then she commented, “How can one go on and be happy when you lost all your family? Maybe it’s the sense of, you did it somehow. Later, they don’t look this happy…”

Arya’s grandma had depression and PTSD and could not talk about it. Arya shared, “Feels so big overshadowing, hard to know where to start and express it to people, even here. For my wedding I wanted to elope. I wanted to be in a beach in

Hawaii, in a sundress. I had to throw a huge wedding. People ask: Why? Because I am descendant of Holocaust survivors, there is no other option.”

Arya had four grandparents when she was a child. The last one died after she got married. She shared that she treasured that I grew up with them. She also grew up with a legacy of anger and pain which was very present in her family. Yet, while anger was extremely welcomed and accepted, they were taught to not be sad. She shared, “I realized a few years ago, when I had a medical procedure that I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was I going to have major surgery? And my mother, said, ‘The most important thing is to not be sad because it is all going to be okay.’” Oh, this is how you survive!

There is no space for sadness. And this is where I had it. That’s been the most present part in thinking about this legacy.”

Arya walked towards the altar while explaining that she was laying the picture down instead of propping it up because it felt really heavy to her. She did not feel like it was something everyone needed to have really present by being prominently visible. She, too, appeared very sad.

There was a long pause, while some of the women were crying. “Lillian”

(pseudonym) looked at a color picture that she brought of her and her grandmother

133 together and shared: “I didn’t think that there would be parts of who I am that are affected. Also, being in a room full of women makes me think of the roles women play in their families.” Lillian brought a photo of her and her Safta (grandmother in Hebrew) from when Lillian was already an adult. “She is my connection to the Holocaust,” Lillian shared. Lillian’s Safta was her father’s mother. Lillian’s grandparents were married before the war. They were Lithuanian and were physicians. A Polish family helped them survive. Lillian did not know her grandfather because he died before she was born.

She commented, “I realize, too, that I don’t think I ever sat in a room full of people and talked about this legacy. I can remember this balance of it’s always very present but not spoken about. It’s something that is present, a weight. It’s integrated into this being.” She told the group that she thinks of her Safta “as very spunky, unconventional, had this spirit, and she did tell stories.” She was comfortable telling the same 15 stories about the Holocaust. Lillian explained that a lot of those stories were even funny. Lillian heard her grandmother telling these stories but yet there were other things that Safta could not talk about.

Lillian shared an example of one of the funny stories: “When they were in a work camp and one of the guards was sort of nicer, they would say, ‘For him I wish I nice death,’ and she would laugh really hard. And then, of course, she would tell these terrible stories.” Lillian said that her grandmother had a lot of humor and vivacity and also believed that not being sad was the key to survival. Lilllian shared, “But then she would get sad and I’d say, ‘You want to talk?’ Then she would say, ‘Who wants to hear those old stories? Let’s talk about something else, listen to music or read.’ I didn’t realize how

134 much, how meaningful it is to honor these people and these stories in an intentional way, feels really important.”

“Isabella” (pseudonym) spoke next. Soft-spoken, she talked about a long, dark, blue robe with gold buttons that her grandmother had made, which she brought to share with the group. The robe belonged to her mother’s mother who grew up in New York.

She was very creative, was an actress, and wrote for soap operas on the radio but her grandfather stopped her from doing that.

Isabella shared, “This garment was important to me growing up. I saw it in the closet, I would imagine wearing it. When she came close to dying I said to my mother I wanted it. I think her creativity comes through me. This represents my relationship to my family’s legacy and the Holocaust because it wasn’t talked about.”

Among the participants’ families, Isabella’s mother’s side of the family were the only Jews who completely cut themselves off from being Jewish and Isabella’s mother was raised with a Christmas tree. Isabella observed, “Part of the symbolism for me in this mysterious garment is the unknown knowing that it has impacted me but not knowing exactly where it comes from because nobody talks about it. There are missing buttons which represent the missing pieces that hold the stories together and the family together.”

Isabella’s grandmother was born in the United States and went back to the

Ukraine before WWII to visit her grandmother and cousins. She later told stories about that trip and the part of the family that was killed in the Holocaust. Isabella’s mom did not know about those deaths that until she looked in the registry; Isabella’s grandmother did not talk about the Holocaust. Isabella explained that there was a strong pattern to disconnect. Isabella shared, “My grandparents had Jewish noses. All Jewish girls got

135 nose jobs in New York. Mother had a nose job. I have two nose rings on my nose. (I have) so much sadness relating to being Jewish.” When Isabella was interviewing her mom about their family history, her mom told her for the first time about a horrible trauma that her mom went through. She remembered being tied up at a neighbor’s home but does not remember what happened. She said, “There is no point in remembering all this. Live in the now. I am happy now. What is the point of going back.” Isabella reflected, “I am reclaiming the family story and heritage and putting it back together for me and future generations. Hold the pain and transform it through healing. My grandmother wore this robe to the academy awards with my grandfather, a way to express herself. He stopped her from acting, being an artist.”

Isabella got up, hung the robe behind the altar and when she sat down, “Elana”

(pseudonym) shared that she forgot to bring something and started talking about her family history. Her mother’s parents were from Berlin. In 1939, they came to the United

States. Her grandmother lost all her family. Elana found out through her mother, who visited Auschwitz recently, that the family was sent there. When Isabella’s they came here, they changed their name and got a lot of support from German Jewish immigrants in New York. Elana’s mom went through a process of reclaiming Judaism about 12 years ago. She started a spiritual path and went on a bearing witness retreat to Auschwitz with the Zen Peace Order. Elana followed in her footsteps. Elana shared that it was interesting to her that her grandmother would tell stories. Just two months before she passed away, the day she went into the hospital, her book was published. It was a memoir mostly about the time of leaving Germany and what happened afterwards.

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Elana remarked, “She used to read me these stories so I feel connected to the stories. The thing I resonate the most right now with, what people are saying is that she became an MFT and studied with German Jews who were immigrants in New York and was very radical, was sex therapist, and yet she never expressed emotion. It was the emotions that were too much for her. She was incredibly practical, and also very active, engaged in doing things, and being things, and yet, I never knew what was going on inside of her.”

Elana went to Auschwitz two years ago, and very deeply connected with her grandmother’s brother, who was 19 when he died there. She shared that one thing she would have brought today was a ceramic bird she brought back from Cracow that, for her, was a way to bring him home. She also would have brought her grandmother’s book.

Elana, with tears rolling down her cheeks, commented:

I had an emotional connection with him I did not have with her, just being there in Auschwitz, and yet, I look at all these pictures and I see my grandmother in all of them and I was definitely the light of her life. My mother was her only child and I was her only grandchild. She could not connect with my mom. There was too much trauma there. And yet, for me, she could see me as the light of the future. It’s taken me a while to appreciate the way she was able to show me her love.

Elana showed the group the earrings she was wearing which were made especially for her. They had diamonds and pearls that her grandmother smuggled from Germany.

Elana took them off and put them on the altar. In closing, she said, “I want to say how grateful I am to be here in this group. I also feel like I am bringing the stories of the women that I am in a group with, of Jews and Palestinians and Germans, a woman’s group recognizing the suffering that goes (on) and continues.”

Once Elana placed her earrings on the altar and went back to her chair “Sarah”

(pseudonym) started talking about her grandparents. Her father’s parents were Holocaust

137 survivors. Sarah’s father was born in a DP camp and moved to New York when he was four. Her grandparents were from outside of Cracow. Sarah’s grandfather, his parents, and sisters survived, but for most of the Holocaust her grandparents were on the run in work camps. Sarah shared,

When I was growing up, I started asking questions, and I grew up in religious school with the, “You can’t forget! You can’t let it happen again! Remember, remember!” fear I have of the denial of people’s history… I especially realize in my early 20s, I had this big fear Nazis were going to come any moment. Everything is never okay. What is going to happen next? I can’t be happy. Something is about to go really wrong. This feeling of, “You can’t trust, you got to be on the run.” But, at same time, I also grew up with a sense of social justice. I can’t let it happen again for Jews and others.

She explained that she had a conflict because her grandparents would tell her, “Do for Jews first.” She understood where it came from for them because of what they experienced, but Sarah believed it was antithetical to what needs to be done in order to prevent such trauma from happening again. Sarah commented that she felt very alone with all of this until she talked to her cousin about it. She had a knowing that she was

Jewish and continuing that legacy was really important to her parents. She felt the pressure. She had lot of sadness and pain from this experience but felt like she was not allowed to talk about it and share the stories. She explained, “I am supposed to hold them in or say, ‘It’s okay because it happened a long time ago.’ I feel like my partner can’t hold this experience. I feel my mom could not hold that for my dad; (it was) part of the challenge they had.”

Sarah brought a picture of her grandparents and their siblings and a couple of cousins. To her it represented joy and the ongoing legacy of those people who survived and how important family was for them. She also brought another object to share, which was an art piece that she made seven years earlier. It had some of the symbols of her

138 story including stars of David. She described it, saying, “The way that the stars are scratched out captures my constant emotional connection to the Holocaust and also my connection to social justice.”

The last participant to speak was “Natalie” (pseudonym). She started by sharing that her dad’s side of the family were the ones who experienced the Holocaust. Her grandfather was from Turkey and her grandmother was from Greece. When her grandmother was 15, her own father was taken to a concentration camp; she thought she could help him get back but she was captured. Around the same time, Natalie’s grandfather stole the torah from the temple and hid it in his house because he was afraid the Nazis were going to burn the temple. He did not tell Natalie this story until he was 80; six months before he died he sat her down for an hour. She commented, “The guy would not talk to me for 10 minutes. We weren’t that close. We didn’t talk about deep things, but he thought I should know this story.”

Natalie said that her grandparents migrated to Venezuela where eventually Natalie was born. She added, “My grandmother was like my mother. She was the love of my life.

This photo is of us at the beach with shades of purple; that was my favorite color.” She brought a few other pictures that included one of her grandfather and another of her grandmother when she was 15 years old, which is when she was captured. Natalie said that she had a picture of her grandmother that she did not bring which showed her in a

Red Cross hospital bed just after she got out of the camp; she was very thin.

Natalie shared, “I was about eight or nine when I found out about the Holocaust. I said, ‘What is that on your arm?’ Somehow she felt she could tell me the story. She told me and I cried. She told me so much. It felt (to her like) it was the time to tell me.” She

139 asked her grandmother to write a book about her story, and her grandmother told her she would if she visited her and helped her. Natalie felt torn but could not do it in part because she was discovering her sexual orientation and she knew her grandmother would not accept it.

Natalie shared that Steven Spierlberg’s Shoah project interviewed her grandmother. Natalie thought that she is very stoic in the video. One time when Natalie visited her, she told her she wanted her to see “Life is Beautiful.” Natalie was nervous because of the humorous approach the subject which could be insulting to some people.

“But she loved it,” Natalie shared with the group. “She loved it! And I thought, ‘My gosh! You didn’t feel offended!’” Natalie thought her grandmother was amazing because after all she had been through, she did not lose her playfulness. However, Natalie shared:

Much of what everyone is talking about is so right on: You feel your sadness alone and you share your joy with other people. That was the rule, and she couldn’t really grasp it. I mean can you imagine having survived the Holocaust? And I am over here; I am so sad and so depressed. She couldn’t understand what on earth I could be sad about and there was so much going on inside of me.

Natalie reflected that due to the Holocaust, she is not supposed to show much emotion even though emotions were leaking out everywhere. But Natalie, being very emotional, became the person who held emotion for the family. In closing her sharing,

Natalie said of her grandmother, “She told me that she took care of a five-year-old girl while in Auschwitz and she fed her from her part of her piece of bread. My heart cracks open to think about that. The child was later killed.”

The day closed with appreciations for each other and the group. Among the many things participants shared, Isabella was grateful “to finally connect to powerful women

140 with whom I share a common story – what an honor.” She felt an instant community when she walked into the door and said she had never felt that in her life.

After the research day, I emailed the women and asked them to answer post- research questions either by email or on the phone. Isabella reflected by sharing that being in a group of women that come from a Jewish background with similar history allowed for profound holding of the experience. The fact that they explored together with the same intention intensified the permission to release, to feel connected, to touch, to be held by others. She expressed that “as a group we created a new home, and a place to be able to be held that was not offered up by families.”

In her post- research evaluation, Lillian commented that what she felt was most important for her was the realization that the legacy is a very big deal and has really impacted her and her family. She had not explored that in the past very much.

How I Was Affected

I felt a sense of sisterhood when I heard the participants’ stories and realized the similarity in our conflicts and struggles. I felt grief, rage, and despair. At the same time, I felt excited to be with a group of third generation women. The sense of community and bonding was very palpable to me.

Imaginal Structures

I have an imaginal structure that I am powerlessness and I do not have a legitimate voice. As a woman and also as the youngest of three siblings, I was expected to be the listener and not the speaker. Men had the power and the voice. They were

141 reasonable, smart and knowledgeable. I was not supposed to have a complex set of experiences and affects. My job was to take care of others emotionally. To have feeling, but not too much feeling, was to be feminine and sensible. I was expected to be the one to carry the story of the Holocaust. But I was not supposed to be depressed. And I was not supposed to be very happy either because life was hard.

I have another imaginal structure that arises as a way to counter the powerless structure. This second structure is the one in me who strives for having a voice, having power, and helping other oppressed ones find their own voice and power. I have to work with both of these structures and my history of powerlessness and victimization in order to value myself as a woman and a thinker who may take space without bitterness or doubt.

Theoretical Concepts Assisting in These Interpretations

Theory that supports interpretation of this Learning involves the relationship of descendants to the past. Baum proposes that each generation needs to come up with their own story of their relationship to the Holocaust, which includes knowing how to remember without being destroyed by history.2 Kellerman remarks that descendants often do not feel safe sharing their stories of Holocaust trauma because families tend to deny the transmission of trauma.3 Descendants have received messages from family members that encourage them to look to the future and not the past. Fershmtan observes that families turned away from their histories because they were too painful and at the time too raw to be metabolized or integrated.4

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Volkas proposes that although trauma might never disappear, by speaking their story, the inheritor of historical trauma can be liberated from a tortured denial or rejection of its existence.5

Another line of thought useful here involves Jewish teachings. Fershtman notes that Talmudic legend teaches that wherever there is a minyan, a group of 10 Jews, the

Shekhinah is present.6 Schwartz observes that by the sixteenth century the concept of the

Shekhinah was increasingly identified as the feminine aspect of God.7 The author notes that Shekhinah originally dwelled in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and went into exile with the Jewish people when the Temple was destroyed.8 According to Schwartz, the

Shekhinah is portrayed as the Bride of God, the personification of the Sabbath Bride.9

When, on the Sabbath, she is joined in a mystical union with God, and Jews are able to experience a temporary moment of the messianic era.10

My Interpretations of What Happened

This learning states that when the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors, gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Taking this first step of telling their stories created more safety in the group to then move into deeper aspects of their experience. One of the participants,

Isabella, spoke to this when she reflected that as soon as she walked into the room she felt she had an instant community and felt very comfortable. It was significant for her to finally connect to powerful women with whom she shares a common story. Here Isabella also spoke to how for her and the other participants, this gathering was the first time that

143 they were in a circle with only third generation descendant women speaking their stories.

She stated that their gathering in this way allowed for a profound holding experience that she had not felt before in her life which created permission for them to speak, to release, to feel connected, and hold each other. Isabella’s statements are supported by theory from

Kellerman who notes that descendants do not receive the support at home to speak their own stories of how they have been affected by the Holocaust. Often, there is a denial that trauma has been passed down and there is a message that one should not look back but look to the future.

Another of the participants, Lillian, reflected that for her one of the most important aspects of the study was the realization that the legacy “is a very big deal and has really impacted me and my family” and how she had “not explored that very much before.” Volkas observations can help explain what Lillian and others felt. By speaking their stories participants can feel liberated from the denial or rejection of the existence of the trauma. The lack of attention in the family can also be interpreted using Fershtman’s observations that the trauma was still too raw and too painful to be able to be metabolized or integrated. Because the third generation is further away from the events the trauma has titrated and they are more able to metabolize, integrate and transform it.

Having the space to share their stories was an opportunity for the participants to acknowledge that they have been affected by the Holocaust and that each has their own story of how they were affected while also find commonalities amongst themselves. As the women told their stories they validated each other by saying that they could relate to each other stories in terms of the feeling that they were the ones carrying the Holocaust

144 story for their families and that they received messages to carry the story and not be depressed about it, but also not be too happy.

By speaking their stories, there grows a permission for descendants to notice, to feel, to acknowledge, and to receive support to be able to see that they have been affected in significant ways and to go into shadow places in themselves and in their family history. As the participants in this study opened up in this way, there came to be a willingness among participants to submit to how the day was going to unfold. They had some basic trust that they were going to be contained to somehow meet some shadow aspect of themselves and hopefully find that there could be some movement. They were willing to be acted upon, not just in the sorrow, pain, negativity, and anger, but also to have those difficult experiences transformed in some way. It could be argued that participants were putting into action what Baum believes is imperative: that each generation speaks their own story of their relationship to the Holocaust. In this way the women began to take power and began shaping and giving meaning and voice to the experience of third generation women.

It could also be interpreted that the women invoked the Shekhinah and tapped into this archetype to help them hold the experience of the day. The women’s time together began with a ritual, tablecloth, and white candles. These are potent symbolic objects/images because they are also used during the Sabbath. One interpretation of these ritual symbols is that the Sabbath was invoked and thus the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, was present. The Shekhinah, the personification of the Sabbath bride, was present because the gathering of the 10 women formed a minyan. The Shekhinah, the one who is in exile with the Jews, was with these 10 women gathered on the day of the study,

145 who themselves had part of themselves and/or their experience in a kind of exile until this time. The presence of the Shekhinah helped the process unfold. Furthermore, the use of symbols such as fire can also be understood as the women tapping into universal symbols and rituals. It is possible that a feminine universal energy was also invoked as well as other potential archetypes that are present with people who are in exile.

Validity Considerations

Validity in the participatory paradigm is assured through consideration of intersubjectivity pertaining to the experiences of all involved in the field. For this research study, the accounting for the intersubjective field consists of my reflection of my own structures, observations of participants’ reactions, and body language and how participants’ responses moved my co-researcher and me. I also considered my co- researcher’s and my own reactions as well as our shared differences and similarities.

Drawing upon participants’ identification of key moments and their insights as well as drawing upon concepts and principles from the existing literature helped to bring further understanding to the intersubjective field.

Validity of this learning is supported by the fact that throughout this process I have reflected upon my own process and experience and have been careful about not over-interpreting and being careful about attributing my experience to that of the participants. I have drawn upon others including my therapist and peers to help me be objective. This has meant actually allowing myself to see similarities between me and other third generation women, rather than to think it is just me and nobody else that has had experiences like mine in relation to the Holocaust. Also, some of the participants’

146 expressions have helped remind me that they are my sisters. For example, one of the participants said at the end of the day, “having a common story helped me be safe.” My sense of safety with them was a reflection of their sense of safety.

Learning Two: Facing Ereshkigal

This Learning states: With the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair, and guilt. The sense of community that the participants created at the beginning of the day helped provide a strong and experience-worthy container. The women modeled for each other and supported each other in ways that further strengthened the container. They were able to express ambivalence but also express intense affect including rage, grief, despair, and shame. That they were able to go so deeply allowed them the opportunity to begin to digest their experience in a way that they had never done before.

What Happened

When the altar building was over, I decided to invite participants to express how they were affected. One of the first women to share was Esha. She came into the circle, first kissed the altar, and then knelt, facing it. Sitting back on her haunches, she rested her upper body on her thighs. She let out a deep, loud, continuous cry and sobbed loudly for some time. When the sobbing subsided, she stood up and went to her chair. Many of the women were crying.

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Isabella came into the circle next. She knelt on the floor touching her grandmother’s robe. With a lot of sadness on her face and with a soft voice, she said that she was used to telling stories but not really embodying them. She observed that talking about the trauma was not healing and, she stated that she wished she could “break down” and “completely fall apart.”

Gently but firmly, I responded, saying to her, “you can do it.” She started crying intensely and after a few moments shared that she was feeling the permission to be human and fall apart, “not have to carry all of these tears, rivers of tears, from so many generations. I just want to breathe, let tears come out, and not feel like I have to turn around and do it by myself.”

Following Isabella, Hannah came into the circle and said, “I live everyday in mourning. I don’t have a life. I stay at home and study because I am mourning everyday, paying homage to this people.” Natalie then came into the circle and shared that she felt relief seeing that people were crying. She said she was tired of processing but appreciates the safe space to reopen this and bring healing.

Then the room got quiet and Lillian with a slight smile on her face requested that at some point during the day we might dance Horas. Hora is a traditional Eastern

European and Jewish circle dance. People create a circle by holding each other’s hands and move so as to make the circle spin. I encouraged her to lead the dancing right then.

The group agreed and we danced, sang, and laughed for about 10 minutes.

When we stopped dancing, I noticed that Arya looked troubled with a blank look on her face. I asked her how she was, as the group sat on the floor in a circle. The group watched attentively as I assisted Arya for about 10 minutes in tracking how she was

148 affected. She said she felt dizzy and shaky and that in what had happened so far, there was a lot of psychic pain to take in and hold. She told us that she tends to dissociate during such intensity but also that she felt sadness and fear of feeling the sadness. I guided her through some breathing and tracking of her body. She shared that her throat was constricted. I asked if she needed to scream. She said she could scream, but wanted to use, “NO!” as the word to scream. Other participants said they wanted to yell, too. We started to scream, some pounded on the floor, some stayed quiet.

After the scream, Hanna told the story of how she, her boyfriend and a group of friends were watching a film called “Donkey Punch.” She explained that donkey punch is a sexual act in which the penetrating partner will punch the back of the head or neck of the partner they are penetrating. The shock of the blow supposedly causes the anal or vaginal muscles to tighten around the penis which heightens the penetrating partner’s orgasm but can also cause injury or death to the partner. Hanna’s reaction to the movie was to get up and go to the bottom of the stairs to scream on the top of her lungs. Her friends were really uncomfortable. She said, “In general it means something different when a man screams than when a woman screams, if a woman screams it’s hysteria. With a man it’s rationality and it’s disheartening. It’s like your mother screaming, is unnerving.”

At this point I went to get a bat and a pillow to see if anyone wanted to hit it.

There was a lot of discussion among the participants about whether using the bat and pillow was the best way to express anger. Though some people liked the idea, others were very uncomfortable so the group decided not to use the bat and pillow. Instead,

Esha suggested another activity to express anger.

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She introduced an exercise called, “I am angry that…” in which two people stand facing each other. One person holds the space and helps the other person express anger by saying to them, “I am angry that….” This prompts the other person to respond and express anger. I volunteered to hold space for Esha. We stood and the rest of the women came closer to us forming a semi-circle. I began by providing the phrase, “I am angry that…” and Esha completed the sentence. She expressed with full force, “I am angry that women get raped… that I cannot be angry because people think I am not okay… that I did not know that I was beautiful. I am angry, angry, angry, angry. I am sad.” Esha began to cry. Other participants were crying, too. Hannah, who like the other women, was engaged while observing, said, “That was awesome. That was amazing.” Natalie, another participant, said, “Yes, you are extremely courageous to step out into your feelings. It is giving me permission to go there.” Lillian, said, “It’s so unusual to hear women’s anger, super loud… Yes!”

At that point I asked Natalie, “Do you want to do it?” All the women laughed.

Natalie then stood and repeated the exercise with Esha holding space for her. Some of the statements that she screamed were: “I am fucking angry that I had to mother my own mother… that she did not know what the fuck she was doing… that my father was a peripheral person that never talked about his feelings.”

Another moment that informed this learning happened in the afternoon when Esha engaged in a psychodrama related to her desire to follow her path which might also mean breaking up her family. She expressed feeling guilty and selfish and afraid that the ancestors would not support her. (A detailed description of this psychodrama is provided below as part of Learning Three.) Esha reflected upon her experience of the psychodrama

150 in the questionnaire that she answered at the end of the day, “Claiming my anger and my life’s path helped me accept where I am.”

In the psychodrama de-brief, Arya talked about the affect of fear. She told the group that her grandmother would say to her that she should not be too happy and that if she was happy, she should not show it because people would want to destroy her happiness. In response to this, I said, “Is there also the message that because ancestors were killed you should not be too happy, because they did not get to be that happy?”

Arya thought about it for a moment and responded pensively, “I wonder if that was in the background. I wonder if that is really what was behind it.” Then she said, lighting up,

“Yeah, how can you ever be so happy when other people lost so much?” Firmly, she said,

“Yes.”

During the same de-brief, Hannah expressed her anger at the destruction of community that happened as part of the Holocaust:

We live in a world completely broken. There is no world anymore. Why do Shabbat by myself in my apartment? Community is gone. The world where traditions were made does not exist anymore…Several moments, I had fucking moments, “Fuck Nazis! We are still here alive, and abundant!” But (at the) same time… I don’t want people to know I am Jewish…

Also considered for this learning is a moment that occurred before breaking up for lunch as the group sat on the floor in a circle. Spontaneously, participants began moving closer and closer together to the point of everyone’s knees touching. We held hands and one by one, participants shared appreciations and thoughts about how the morning went.

Arya shared that she was appreciative for the opportunity to feel things that are taboo.

Elana talked about how she spends a lot of time at a distance from the topics that had surfaced in the group and she expressed appreciation for the availability and presence,

151 courage and strength that the women showed as well as for their integrity to what was happening that day.

Additional data for this learning came from the written evaluation that participants filled out at the end of the day. Included was a question about the most powerful moment of the day. Lillian wrote that one of the most powerful moments was when everyone yelled; she had her eyes closed and wrote that she could feel waves of heat and energy. Another powerful moment, wrote Lillian, was when Esha brought tremendous grief and emotion in front of the altar. It was liberating and fulfilling. Arya answered the same question by writing that she was able to tap into feeling deep pain and sadness because others were also doing so. She observed that feeling at such depths all at once and not dying was powerful for her.

How I Was Affected

I could feel my anger from the beginning of the day. I was impatient as I noted that I was feeling what I had grown to be able to identify, through my psychotherapist’s assistance, as survivor guilt. I wanted my survivor guilt to be over. I also felt guilty for talking about the Holocaust and for doing work that might help us recover. I was angry that I felt guilt and shame for wanting to digest and recover. I also felt anger because the

Holocaust reminds me of my powerlessness and victimization. I wanted to be able to feel my own force and rage but I felt shame and fear for having such feelings.

My anger affected the course of the events during the day. One example is when

Arya dissociated and I led her and the group into screaming and expressing anger. My anger motivated me to direct Arya and the group in this direction but I was also afraid

152 that I was not going to be able to contain her and that we would not be able to come back from such intense expression. As I yelled with the group, I realized that I was feeling despair and terror.

One moment that is important to consider in terms of validity involves the moment when I asked the leading question to Arya about survivor guilt. I was motivated by wanting to learn whether the participants might agree with me about them having survivor guilt. I thought that in order for my research to be valid I had to prove that the women had survivor guilt. My question to Arya did seem to get her thinking specifically about survivor guilt and she seemed to respond to my question in a way that was thoughtfully self-reflective. From my experience, there are times when leading questions about guilt are necessary in order that one may become conscious of it.

Imaginal Structures

I have an imaginal structure related to vulnerability which says it is dangerous to feel and express feelings. I could die if I feel grief. Feeling grief could make me vulnerable to attack. When I was young, my dad would say to me that I should not look back into the pain that is in my history; instead I should move forward. I received mixed messages from my family to both carry the Holocaust but not be depressed. The messages went on: I should not be angry, I should be a nice girl who is there holding everyone else. I was supposed to be there for others but others were not there to hold my experience. I could not be a full human being with all of my feelings, including rage and the urge to be destructive. From this imaginal structure I am the victim while others are the perpetrators for Jews are different from other people. Growing up, I received

153 messages that I should only trust my family and my tribe and if I forget the Holocaust, some similarly huge cultural trauma will happen again. From this structure, I am ever hyper-vigilant and afraid of others.

In reaction to this imaginal structure, I have an imaginal structure is formed out of the desire to be able to relax, to trust others, process and recover from the trauma, and free myself from the guilt. From this structure, I believe I have a right to my own life and experience and full humanness. This structure believes in the possibility of transformation and evolution. On the other hand, this structure that wants to relax is affected by messages that I received that I should relax and be happy instead of being with the complexity of feelings. As a woman, I should be the sunshine girl and the caretaker and not have a complex emotional life which includes anger and conflict.

I have another imaginal structure that is afraid of going into the shadow and suffering. From this structure, I am afraid I will not be able to contain the intensity of those places. I am also afraid that if I engage that exploration, I will be leaving others behind who are unable to do such work or who have warned me against that work. I feel guilty that I have the capacity to go to the pain and suffering and know that I can survive it and as well, that I can hold others in such suffering. Though this imaginal structure has the effect of limiting my power, there is another part of me wants to claim my power to bear the insufferable.

Theoretical Concepts Assisting in These Interpretations

This Learning draws on the important principle that survivors of trauma repress and silence feelings and pass this mode of being on to the next generation. Kellerman

154 points out that survivors’ repressed feelings and experiences get passed on to the next generation “through nonverbal, ambiguous, and guilt-inducing communication” and especially through the infamous “conspirancy of silence.” 11 Wardi observes that the children of survivors absorb and assimilate the principal emotional message the parents transmit to them which is to “beware of any emotional outburst, as it holds the danger of death.” 12

Volkas’ observations on the experience of grandchildren of survivors are also relevant to this learning. Volkas comments that he has seen members of the third and even fourth generations “struggle under the weight of the unexpressed emotional burdens of their ancestors.” 13 He believes that if participants have a chance to fully express and process this collective grief, it is possible that the pain would not be passed on to the next generation.14

Important to this learning is Becker’s observation that the descent into shadow places includes a kind of dying.15 One needs to die in order for something else to be reborn. Also essential for understanding this Learning is Omer’s thinking on expression and ritual. He states that “we need to express in order to experience deeply.” 16 He also notes that ritual requires surrender or willingness: “Surrender is what happens when you allow your sadness to turn into tears.” 17 He also states that vulnerability is the doorway to power.18

The archetype of Lilith is useful to understand the experience of the participants.

Hurwitz explains that in Jewish mythology, Lilith is the carrier of the Shadow

Feminine.19 According to Fershtman, facing Lilith requires entering the realm of the dark feminine, wherein lie grief, rage, and loss.20 When this aspect of consciousness is

155 repressed, it manifests as depression. Thus, integrating Lilith requires turning towards our depression. Fershtman says, “to access Lilith’s powerful gifts of the chthonic feminine, one must be willing to feel the pain and grief that has been disowned and avoided.” 21

Another archetype relevant to this learning is the Shekhinah. By the seventeenth century, Gottlieb asserts, Shekhinah had been figured as a woman mourning for and comforting her people.22 She suffers not only with the whole Jewish people but with each

Jewish soul. Gottlieb contends that without her sharing their suffering, humanity could not endure.23 Another Jewish female figure relevant to this learning is Rachel. The midrash teaches that she is standing by the road to Bethlehem weeping for her children who are set to exile: “A cry is heard in Ramah—wailing, bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children, she refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone…” 24

Auerhahn and Laub’s obervations on the absence of the mother during trauma are important for this learning. They note that the mother is a protective function which is absent during trauma.25 Furthermore, trauma cannot be metabolized without the presence of a mothering other. Fershtman identifies the “Shekhinah as a symbol of the mothering other necessary for the metabolization of traumatic events.” 26

Finally, Turner’s concept of communitas is also useful for this learning.27

Communitas is that sense of oneness and community that might emerge during effective ritual. The place or experience of being in between supports the emergence of communitas in ritual. In such ritual, there is an expansion of space and structure, and participants may experience an ambiguous state in which they go through transitions from one stage, status, role, or level of consciousness to another.

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My Interpretations of What Happened

This Learning is as follows: With the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair, and guilt. By descending into the shadow, the women faced their own pain related to the Holocaust. In doing so rage, grief, despair, and shame emerged.

During the research, participants expressed grief about the loss of family and community. Hannah talked about how she had spent her days mourning the dead and how she owed her life to those who died. Hannah’s statement about her days of mourning resonates with the mythical story of Rachel, who in midrash is said to be standing on the road to Bethlehem, weeping for her children, the children of Israel. Hannah’s statement also connects to the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, who is said to dwell in exile with the people of Israel. Hannah talked about the destruction of community that happened with the Holocaust. Similar to Rachel and the role of the Shekhinah, Hannah carried and communicated the pain of the destruction of the European Jewish community and brought in the feminine aspect for grieving and mourning for and with her people.

Esha and Isabella emoted grief and others felt inspired and relief by their expressions. Reflecting Omer’s contention that surrendering turns sadness into tears,

Isabella, with the help of others, allowed herself to surrender and express what her body needed to express.28 Lillian and Arya speaking about how even though sadness was repressed and avoided, it was very present in their families reflects the teachings of

Volkas and Wardi that grief not processed by the first generation is passed down to the

157 following generations.29 Lillian said that she could still feel the weight of it. Arya described carrying the sadness in her body.

The experience on the day of the study was very different than what participants experienced with their families pertaining to the legacy of the Holocaust. Participants talked about certain emotions such as sadness and anger being taboo in their families.

When Arya dissociated, she exemplified what Wardi describes as a psychically closed off style that is passed on from one generation to the next. Wardi explains that the message passed on is that to feel will result in death.30 It can be interpreted that Arya was experiencing a wave of terror, fear, and despair that comes from the risk of feeling certain feelings.

Arya said that she was afraid of her grief including that she would not be able to contain it. What happened with her can also be interpreted using Becker’s observations that the descent includes a kind of dying. One needs to die in order for something else to be reborn. But there is fear that one would not be able to contain oneself or be contained by others. Part of what happened on the day of the research gathering was that the women were learning how to bear the insufferable. This meeting marked the first time that the participants met some of these parts of themselves. This meeting was possible because there was enough holding and mothering in the group. By going into shadow places and being able to survive that foray, they learned something about the fiber of their being. In her evaluation at the end of the day, Arya wrote that witnessing others feel and express allowed her to tap into her pain and sadness. She wrote, “Feeling so much of that at once and not dying was powerful.” During the research day she shared her appreciation for

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“the space to feel things that are taboo.” Isabella expressed how finally she felt the permission to be human and fall apart.

Another feeling that arose which participants were conflicted about was anger.

Some wanted to express it and some did not. When I brought out a bat that they could use to hit a pillow there were conflicting feelings about whether it was appropriate to use the bat. Some felt it was destructive to allow such expression of anger. Some were even fearful and angry about going in that direction, while others were eager for the opportunity.

Even with this disagreement, there was enough safety in the field that two participants engaged in the “I am angry” exercise. They expressed anger at women’s oppression, that as women they are not supposed to be angry, that they have had to take care of their parents, and that the father-figure has not been present and does not express feelings. Some of the women were quite comfortable expressing intense anger and it was clear that they had anger. More subtly the women who were not so comfortable with expressing rage found it compelling to watch and even encourage the others’ intense expression. It seemed clear that they were doing so because somewhere inside anger lived inside them, too.

The anger and rage that was in the room could be understood as anger that the

Holocaust happened. It seemed that the participants needed to express this anger, especially because in their families there had not been direct anger expressed about the

Holocaust. Hannah expressed rage about the destruction of community. Others were angry at experiences of loss of power and oppression, particularly female oppression and violence against women. Esha, who participated in the psychodrama in relation to her

159 guilt and fear of doing what she wants to do, commented on how powerful it was for her to be able to claim her anger and her life path and this helps her accept herself and where she is at. It could be interpreted that these feelings relates to the struggles around the role and expectations that are imposed upon them as women descendants. In doing so, the participants seemed to connect to the ultimate experiences of loss of power related to slavery and mass extermination of a people.

Perhaps the women were also angry at the fact that they received the messages to hold the trauma and not digest it. Ultimately, as third generation descendants they might have felt that they could not be fully themselves and in their power, to be able to fall apart and recover.

It is useful to bring in the archetype of Lilith to help understand the anger and rage that the women struggled with on the day of the research. Lilith challenged oppression. She asserted her own independence and autonomy. The women had rage at the oppression that the Holocaust represents as well as the oppression that they might have felt as third generation Jewish women. They were trying to assert their own independence and autonomy. They wanted to be the ones to decide how they would live their lives and carry the legacy. They wanted to be able to digest the experience instead of having to carry it in the raw state that their predecessors had handed it on to them.

Perhaps they wanted to individuate and separate from what was passed on by their parents. They lived in a different kind of world now, and were trying to assert their own way of honoring the past while also honoring themselves.

Lilith had undigested rage and shame because when she asserted her own independence and autonomy she was shunned. This alienation produced loneliness,

160 shame, and a destructive force within her. She had no one to help her with this force.

Lilith’s experience was similar to what participants had experienced in their families and community. Like Lilith, they had not had the support and holding that would have allowed them to process their anger and experience.

Participants found it very powerful that they finally had people with whom they could begin to explore their intense affect. Their reluctance about using the bat was perhaps an indication of their fear to fully express themselves, especially their anger and destructive force. Maybe they were afraid of hurting others or getting hurt if they truly asserted themselves and expressed how they felt. Yet they allowed anger to be in the room.

It could be interpreted that mothering as well as mirroring was present throughout the research day which helped create space for the suffering and provided the support for participants to bear it. This interpretation is supported by Auerhan and Laub who believe that the mother is necessary to metabolize trauma as well as Fershtman’s observation that the Shekhinah is the mothering archetype necessary for the metabolization of traumatic events. It can also be interpreted that during the research gathering a universal mothering archetype was present which helped with the integration of profoundly painful material.

Additionally, the creation of communitas provided mothering and mirroring that helped the group go deeper. Drawing upon Turner’s concepts for understanding what happened in the research, when the participants allowed themselves to share story, express such a range of affect, and engage in ritual together, they entered liminal space and communitas. Within that realm, the sacredness of the moments they shared was

161 palpable. Communitas was manifested due to their vulnerable sharing together and as they related to each other, communitas created more space for deeper experience.

Validity Considerations

Validity of this learning is supported by participants’ insights throughout the day as they reflected and enthusiastically shared about how being together as a group was helping them be vulnerable and share feelings they had never before shared. Their willingness and receptivity to support each other and hold each other physically and emotionally, as indicated through their body language and actions as well as words, also validates interpretations made in this learning. Powerful indicators of validity are also the authenticity, coherence, and the depth of affect that participants and co-researchers experienced.

Validity is further supported by participants’ responses in the evaluations and post-research questionnaires in which many of them wrote that their most powerful moments were being with each other and expressing deep emotion and their attributing the importance of feeling community in being able to do so. Participants spoke about the exceptional quality of space that was created and the safety that it brought. One person said, “Finally, I can cry instead of just tell the story.” Another said, “I can feel the sadness and not die.” Still another said, “Seeing others cry or express anger gave me permission to go there. I can see there’s nothing wrong with it.” Summing up, one woman said, “It was the most potent day of my life.”

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The way that my co-researcher and I, as well as the videographer, were affected also speaks to the validity of this learning. We were entranced. The flow of the day and the cohesion amongst the participants as well as us, the researchers, permeated the day.

Learning Three: The Helpers: Emergence of the Friend, in the Form of the Ancestors

This Learning states: Through engaging with the Friend in the form of voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, so allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Repeatedly, the participants revealed messages connected to the Holocaust which they received from their families and community that were limiting to participants’ life experience. As participants processed and faced these messages, it became clear that these messages were negating internalized scripts and that the ancestors were actually their allies, rather than gatekepeers. Participants learned that they can contact the ancestors and ask for their help. They felt the ancestors as loving, accepting, and supportive of who they were and of their creative impulses.

What Happened

After lunch, I recited Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Journey,” to the participants.

Through images of nature, this poem speaks about the journey of individuation and empowerment. The poem describes diving deep into the darkness of the unknown despite the voices that try to stop one from embarking on that journey and instead, remain caring and saving others. The poem acknowledges that the process of individuation might require leaving others or an old self behind in order to embrace transformation. This

163 poem might evoke survivor guilt because it speaks to the pressure to rescue others, yet to choose individuation and claim one’s own life despite whatever might come in relation to leaving others behind.

A psychodrama with Esha evolved out of her reaction to the poem. Halfway into the poem, Esha started to cry. I asked her if she wanted to share what was happening for her. Crying heavily, she said, “I think my husband and I are splitting up.” The room was silent while she continued to cry. We all had our attention on her. One of the participants reached out to hold her hand. She continued, “I try so hard to not listen to the voices. My

Oma (‘grandmother’ in German) would want me to listen to my voice.”

At this point, I suggested that we create a psychodrama during which Esha would talk to her Oma about her issue. I asked Esha to start by addressing Oma, sitting in front of her and was played by Natalie. Esha. Sobbing heavily, Esha said to Oma that she feels selfish for wanting to leave her husband and pursue her passions and her heart’s path. She described those things as luxuries because in Oma’s time women could not follow love.

Esha asked, “How come she get to do what I want” and listen to her inner voice when others could not do that? She felt shame, and asked Oma for help.

As Esha addressed Oma, I noticed that there was gatekeeping or critical voices mixed in with what Esha was saying. I decided to ask my co-researcher to join the form and play the gatekeeper role. As the gatekeeper, my co-researcher said to Esha that she was very selfish, that she should be ashamed of herself, and she should not divorce but should sacrifice, like her ancestors did.

At this point, I asked Esha to move to the position of Oma and speak from that position. Esha, as Oma, started to laugh and said to Esha’s double, Arya, “get over it and

164 shut up,” saying she should leave her husband and do what is best for herself. Her daughter, said Oma, carries all of the spirit of their family. In fact, Oma reminded Esha, when it was time to leave Esha’s grandfather Oma did leave him.

I then coached Esha, as Oma, to address the gatekeeper. As Oma, she ordered the gatekeepers to stop making Esha afraid. Oma told the gatekeepers that Esha needed to do what she wants to do even if it means separating her family. Oma wanted Esha and her great-granddaughter to know that they needed listen to their heart and that they have her support.

The psychodrama ended with Esha taking the position of the Friend. Esha, as the

Friend, said to Arya sitting in for Esha, “Trust yourself. It is okay to do what you need to do to be happy, to take care of yourself. When you do that you are an example to your daughter and future generations.”

Esha reflected upon her experience of the psychodrama on the questionnaire that she answered at the end of the day. “Claiming my anger,” she wrote, “and my life’s path helped me accept where I am.” During the psychodrama de-briefing Esha spoke about the new experience of feeling the support of her ancestors. She said, “I feel the support of all of you and my Oma who I had not thought about invoking for her support, and my great-

Oma Marta, too, and the women before her.”

When the psychodrama was over, I asked everyone to sit in a circle to de-brief and particularly to share how their story might be similar to her story. I also asked those that played roles to share from the role. The sharing turned into a dialogue that lasted about an hour. Most of them participated enthusiastically. The psychodrama opened up a

165 discussion around the ways in which participants have internalized self-negating voices and how they have worked with them.

Arya shared from her personal story as well as from playing the role of Esha by saying that until their generation, marriage was sacrosanct. In times past, marriage existed for survival and support. This generation, she said, has the privilege of having a different relationship to it. It is a privilege to not have to sacrifice and have to keep the family together. Karmic weight is lifted. She shared that while playing the role of Esha she felt blamed and guilty. This statement connects to an earlier comment that Arya shared during the altar exercise. For her wedding, she wanted to elope and get married in

Hawaii in a sundress but instead she had to throw a huge wedding. “Why?” people asked her, “Because I am descendant of Holocaust survivors, there is no other option.”

Also during the psychodrama de-brief, Natalie shared how until that day she had not made the connection between her sexuality and the pressure to have children because she was a Holocaust descendant. She realized that it had involved issues of Jewish values, survival, and pro-creation within Jewish community. She had not been in the right circumstance to have a child, and she felt grief about it.

Lillian shared how she felt pressure from her parents to be Jewish, and to have kids. She has felt pressured to become someone who takes care of other people and to make choices similar to those that women in the past generations have made. She also shared how powerful it was to see in the psychodrama that one can talk back to the voices that are making one feel guilty. She had never seen that before.

Hannah shared her frustration at the confusing messages she received from her parents that she was supposed to be married to a Jew but not let anyone know that she

166 was Jewish. They told her that she should follow some traditions in the ways that they did. Hannah also shared that she thought that in this culture people are not supposed to feel pain. People take antidepressants to avoid pain and numb themselves. Hannah told the group that she has liked relationship break-ups because at those times she felt like she had a culturally legitimate reason to feel it, to cry, and to laugh. Hannah asked, “Why do

I want to meet the person of my life and have a great life?”

Sarah, deep in thought, shared about the pressures she has felt about needing to get enough of each moment. She said she felt that she should feel guilty because the ancestors did not get enough so she has to make up for it. She also got the message that things can change at any moment so she should be grateful for what she has and should be seeking more and more. What Sarah shared at this point related to what she shared earlier in the day regarding messages she received that she must not forget the Holocaust or let it happen again, and that she needs to remember, always remember. Sarah said that she could still feel fear that the Nazis were still going to come at any moment. She should not be happy and should not trust because something could go really wrong. She had to be on the run and, at the same time, work for social justice.

In contrast to these messages and pressures, throughout the day participants also got in touch with the presence of their grandparents as supportive and loving towards them and the group. Earlier in the day, during the altar sharing, Lillian shared about her special connection to her grandmother. She brought a picture of herself as an adult with her grandmother, both smiling. As Lillian walked towards the altar and lit a candle she said, “In the younger pictures we have of her, she was so beautiful.” Then Lillian sat

167 down and said, “And like in this picture, she is smiling…, she would be smiling at all of us, really happy to see us.”

While sharing at the altar in the early part of the day Elana spoke about her special connection with her grandmother. While looking at the pictures of the ancestors on the altar she said that she could see her grandmother in all of the pictures. Elana knew that she was the light of her grandmother’s life and, while her grandmother could not connect with her mom because they had both struggled with their experiences of trauma there, her grandmother could see Elana as the light of the future.

As Elana spoke, tears rolled down her cheeks. She shared that it had taken her some time to appreciate the ways that her grandmother showed her love. On the day of the research meeting, Elana was wearing the earrings her grandmother made for her with diamonds and pearls that she had smuggled from Germany. Elana put those on the altar and then talked about going to Auschwitz for a witness-bearing retreat with the

Peacemaking Institute. She spoke about feeling the support of her ancestors while there, particularly her grandmother’s brother who was killed in Auschwitz. She felt that he was offering compassion and great supportive love to her.

Natalie also spoke about a special, loving connection with her grandmother.

Throughout the day, when she spoke about her grandmother, her eyes lit up, her face softened, and she smiled. For the altar sharing, she brought pictures of herself as a little girl with her grandmother. She shared that her grandmother was like her mother; Natalie described how her grandmother considered Natalie the love of her life. Natalie also spoke about how her grandmother would tell her to not be sad in public; Her grandmother could not understand what Natalie could be sad about, given all that she had. Natalie felt guilty

168 to feel sad and depressed when others had suffered so much more. She recounted that she could not share what was going inside of her. On the other hand, she realized that was the one holding emotion for everyone. During the altar building, Natalie spoke about how her grandmother had saved a little girl in the camp by sharing her food with her. Natalie honored her grandmother’s courage and love for the little girl. At the end of the day when

I asked participants to address the ancestors, Natalie stood up and while looking at the pictures and objects on the altar, shared how her grandma was always playful, creative, engaging, and loved life. Natalie said that it was her grandmother that introduced her to music and taught her a song that she sang to the group in Spanish, “Toma el llavero abuelita y enseñame tu ropero, prometo quedarme quieto y no tocar lo que saques tu.”

(Take the keychain, Grandma, and show me your wardrobe. I promise to stay still and not touch what you take out.) Also related to artistic creativity, when Isabella shared the robe that her grandmother made, she said that she felt that her grandmother’s creativity comes through her and is something they share.

How I was Affected

Witnessing and participating in the psychodrama and the de-brief, I thought about how doing this work is subversive and I felt afraid but also excited and energized. Like many of the women who spoke, I could also feel the support of our ancestors. I remembered the work that I have already done around being able to connect with ancestors who I knew or who I never met before and feel their loving support towards me. Knowing deep down that they actually want the best for me. Having had these experiences in the past helped me trust and validate what participants were experiencing.

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Imaginal Structures

I have an imaginal structure related to self-sacrifice and compliance. As a Jewish woman, one of the main messages I grew up with was that I should sacrifice for the family and the tribe. I should do what my family and community tell me to do. They know better what is good for me and what is safe for me. I should marry a Jewish husband who will take care of me and I should take care of my family and the tribe.

Otherwise, I will be in danger and I will put the tribe in danger. The imaginal structure formed under pressure of such message involves my feeling guilty, selfish, and childish if, for example, I do art, or if I should imagine marrying outside the tribe.

A related imaginal structure is self-sabotaging. Feeling guilty if I enjoy life can trigger this structure which holds that life is not about finding my own path but about doing what I am supposed to do. The belief from this position is that in sacrificing, one finds happiness. My mother told me as a child that my ancestors were in the sky looking down upon me and at everything that I do with a critical eye so I had to be obedient. I also have a rebellious structure that fights these gatekeepers and resists the guilt and fear so I can follow my desires. As I begin to work with these various imaginal structures, I have more freedom to enjoy life, meaning that I might experience as much of what life provides instead of being afraid and in protection. It means having the freedom to be with my own experience and truth. I am not married to a Jewish man, I have a profession, I am a scholar, and I belong to many different communities that are not Jewish. In the process of standing up for myself I ask my ancestors for their support.

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Theoretical Concepts Assisting in These Interpretations

A concept of importance to this Learning is that of survivor guilt as elaborated by

Modell and Weiss. This learning uses the concept which includes that descendants of survivors may also feel survivor guilt. Weiss defines survivor guilt as “guilt about the advantage a person believes they have when compared with others, such as success, superior abilities, or a greater degree of health and well being.” 31 Modell explains that survivor guilt “may be noticed only through its derivatives, which may appear as self- negating or self-destructive behavior.” 32

Also useful for this Learning are several concepts from ITP, developed by Omer.

First is trauma, which Omer defines as an overwhelming experience that a person is not able to integrate.33 Omer states that people develop an adaptive identity as a result of trauma. Adaptive identity is held in place in part through gatekeeping which are those

“individual and collective dynamics that resist and restrict experience.” 34 Omer identifies the personification of these dynamics as gatekeepers. If one experiences trauma, gatekeeping dynamics may be associated with the coping strategies that develop.

In turn, such dynamics might be passed along intergenerationally within families. Omer’s term, “cultural gatekeepers,” describes a collective dynamic in response to trauma. An additional concept from Omer that will be useful for this Learning is that of the Friend which “refers to those deep potentials of the soul which guide us to act with passionate objectivity and encourage us to align with the creative will of the cosmos.” 35

Another significant principle for this Learning is what some authors have recognize as the need to re-create families among survivors and descendants. Danieli explains that re-creating families was a priority for Holocaust survivors given the fact

171 that the majority of families had been destroyed. 36 New life was considered a victory over the Nazis’ attempt to completely annihilate the Jews. Mor notes that for most survivors, these new families were an existential must, and were intended to provide the security, identity, continuity, and belonging which Jewish community needed so much.37

Sullivan, Knapp, and Fershtman’s observations on the healing power of connecting with the ancestors are crucial to this learning. Sullivan notes that in indigenous cultures, healing and wholeness is achieved by dialoguing with the ancestors.38 Knapp observes that Hasidics believe in the transmigration of souls.39

Feeling the presence of loved ones provided a sense of emotional and historical continuity as well as protection during a time of oppression and pogroms. Fershtman illustrates the significance of connecting to one’s ancestors as a way to heal intergenerational trauma.40

My Interpretations of What Happened

This Learning states: Through engaging with the Friend voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Throughout the day, participants identified family and community messages they have received in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Participants expressed that these messages limit and negate their experience. When they internalized these messages, they thought or they were told that they came from the ancestors.

Therefore, they may think that the ancestors are opposed and critical of their choices and paths. Participants may also feel survivor guilt. They may feel guilty and selfish if they

172 have a better life than their ancestors had. They may be afraid of hurting their ancestors or of getting hurt.

When participants confronted these messages, they came to realize that the messages are perpetuated by internalized negating voices or gatekeepers and that these scripts are actually different than the voice of the ancestors. These findings are supported by the following data.

Participants shared the messages, pressures, and ways of being they have had to undertake as a result of being Holocaust descendants. One of the main topics that came up was the pressure and conflict that the women felt between choosing themselves over having to continue their Jewish and family lineage by getting married and having children. Arya talked about self-sacrificing by having the kind of wedding her family and community wanted her to have, even though that was not what she wanted. Lillian spoke about the pressure to be Jewish and have children even though that might not be what she wants to do but since it is what her female ancestors chose to do, she should as well. She thought that speaking back to the guilt was powerful. Sarah mentioned feeling pressure to be happy and always grateful. She felt guilty that she has more than her ancestors so therefore she felt the need to get happiness out of every moment and to seek more and more. Hannah talked about how it was liberating for her to be able to feel pain, depression, and sadness instead of setting herself the goal of marrying the perfect person and having a great life. She wanted to be able to feel all of life instead of limiting herself.

Through her psychodrama Esha demonstrated gatekeepers that said that if she did differently than her ancestors she was being selfish. In relation to this gatekeeper, she and other participants talked about feeling guilt about divorcing, becoming an artist, splitting

173 a family through divorce, celebrating their wedding their own way, and having the privilege as women to choose their own career and path.

Some of the messages and gatekeepers they discussed relate to the sense of duty to have children and prioritize family that are part of the legacy of the Holocaust, mirroring Danieli and Mor’s observations that Jews after the Holocaust felt a need and responsibility to perpetuate the race after the attempted annihilation of their people. This sense of duty seems to have manifested in what participants expressed as sacrificing their desires in order to fulfill family expectations to prioritize raising a family. For example,

Arya had a wedding that she did not want to have. Natalie became aware of how this sense of duty to recreate was in conflict with her sexuality. She expressed feeling sad and guilty that she was not doing what she was supposed to do. Esha felt guilty about breaking up her family. Hannah talked about her frustration with the message she received from her parents to marry a Jewish man because they had married Jewish partners. Such gatekeeping that emphasizes loyalty to the tribe and a sense of duty to recreate can cause the women to feel guilty if they choose something else. Women face the painful question of whether they choose themselves or follow tradition as their grandparents and parents have done.

As demonstrated with the psychodrama and the de-brief following that exercise, third generation women can face and transmute these gatekeepers. The data revealed that when the women face these voices and examine them, they are revealed to be internalized negating or critical voices. In fact the ancestors are more likely to be their allies instead of such judgmental voices. For example, Esha commented that before the psychodrama,

174 she had not thought of asking her Oma and ancestors for their help. After the psychodrama, she felt their support.

Esha’s claim is mirrored by the many ways that throughout the day, the women connected to the ancestors as supportive, loving, and affirming of them instead of limiting, critical, and judgmental. Connecting with the voices of the ancestors as supportive forces helped the women face the internalized critical and negative voices, as well as connect with other internal resources. Participants shared their special connection to their grandparents by talking about them, expressing the love they felt from them, and sharing images and objects. Their ancestor’s presence in the room was palpable. There was a loving, supportive presence in the room and some of the participants felt that the ancestors were happy for everyone present. It could be said that feeling the presence of the ancestors as the Friend allowed for psychological movement in the participants.

Natalie, Lillian, and Elana spoke about their special relationship to their grandmothers.

Natalie said that for her grandmother, Natalie was the love of her life. When she spoke about her grandmother her face softened, she had a gentle sweet smile, and her eyes lit up. Lillian spoke about her grandmother being happy to see the group and Elana shared how her grandmother saw her as the light of the future. Elana proudly shared the earrings her grandmother made for her which she wore on the day of the research. Elana also spoke about how when she had visited Auschwitz in the past, she felt the support of her ancestors. She said of those murdered there, we are “reminders of the fact that we are all held by the great supportive love. THAT is the presence that they are transmitting.”

The healing power of connecting with the ancestors can also be explained through

Sullivan, Knapp and Fershtman’s observations. They remark that indigenous traditions,

175 as well as Jewish traditions, consider connecting with the ancestors to be essential for healing, reaching wholeness, and helping humans survive. Third generation Jewish women want to be able to be whole instead of adhere to external expectations and pressures of how to be, including about the roles they should fulfill. Being whole means making the unconscious conscious by exploring shadow aspects of the self. It means being in touch with one’s internal resources and being able to feel deeply into life instead of being limited by trauma and fear. Being whole means being able to choose something based not on fear, protection, or tradition but because of love. It means being able to be creative and spontaneous. Moving toward such wholeness happens when one digests trauma and is able to face and transmute gatekeeping. The study revealed that the participants recognized that ancestors very much want such wholeness for the third generation and are a resource for the third generation.

The fact that most women expressed feeling a warm connection towards their grandparents is important to consider. The relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is usually very different than parent/child relationships. There might be sweetness between the grandparent and grandchild that was not present in the same way between parents and children. It is possible that the sweetness of their connection with their grandparents allowed the participants to feel the support of their grandparents in a way that their parents did not provide. It is also possible that the parents are unable to provide this kind of support to their children because they did not experience getting this kind of support from their own parents so they are unable to give it to their own children.

Contrary to what the third generation may have heard from the second generation or to how they had internalized their voices, the ancestors are a resource, and the third

176 generation is able to connect with them in this way. As we evolve and transform perhaps this is also the gift that the third generation brings.

Validity Considerations

The validity of this learning could be characterized by the statement that participants made over and over again during the day, “Oh, me too!” Even though participants had different life stories, they shared a burden that seemed related to the

Holocaust. They shared fears, familiarity with messages, and similar gatekeeping dynamics about who they should be and how they should hold their ancestors.

Validity is also corroborated by the fact that my co-researcher, who was not

Jewish, was very impacted by seeing how much the legacy of the Holocaust was still affecting this generation. It became more real for her as she witnessed the women share how it has affected and still affects them in very concrete ways. My co-researcher and I were very moved to see that throughout the research day participants connected to their ancestors and made their love and support of them very palpable. The spontaneous emergence of coherent and deeply felt material such as the memories and the song speak to this connection. We both had tears at various points when they shared their loving connection with them in this particular ways. We could feel that the ancestors were present as The Friend.

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Learning Four: Re-emergence through Re-joining Community: We Laughed and Cried at the Same Time

This Learning states as follows: When third-generation women descendants explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary, small Jewish community of women. Participants moved towards

Jewish dance and song to hold them at the times of deepest grief and joy. Dancing and singing helped participants to feel a sense of community and connection to each other which allowed them to access vulnerability, deep feeling, and integration of the material.

What Happened

As described in Learning Two, during the morning session, once participants shared their altar pieces and personal stories, I invited them to express how they were affected. After several of the women expressed deep grief and gratitude for the space that had been created and for being able to express as they had not done before, Lillian had an urge that she shared with the group. With a grin on her face she said:

Can I make a request? It feels like this heartbreak… depths of loss… but then at the same time, too, I was flooded with something that felt like it came from somewhere else and it is making me smile almost involuntarily. It is this flood of desire. So my request is if at some point today, that if you guys want to, if we can dance… if we can dance the hora… some circle Jewish fun dance.

Participants laughed and I responded enthusiastically, “Let’s do it!” I encouraged

Lillian to start the dance even though she said she could not remember how to do it.

Everyone joined in. We embraced each other, making a tight circle.

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Lillian showed the hora step by bringing one foot in front of the other. People were laughing and giggling. Everyone started doing the same step. The circle began to move slowly as people laughed, and started to sing the melody without the words to

“Hava Nagila” (“Come, Let Us Rejoice”). Slowly the circle began moving faster.

Everyone was doing the step, humming, and laughing. As the group moved around faster and faster, the singing got louder and louder, the embrace loosened up and the women were holding hands still moving in circles. The singing continued to get louder and louder and there was laughter still. Some of the women started to sing the words to the song and by this time, the circle was moving fast. Then everyone suddenly stopped, jumped and holding hands moved towards the middle of the circle with the arms up towards the sky. Everyone went inside to the middle of the circle and then moved out many times. The group did not want to stop dancing. The energy was high, and everyone kept moving forward and backwards. Then the group started going around in circles again, faster and faster, some singing some humming, then stopping again and doing the same step of going inside and outside the circle moving the arms up toward the sky and down towards the earth. Gradually, the women began to slow down. They met one last time inside the circle, holding hands with arms towards the sky. There was still laughter and singing. They got quieter, stopped, and everyone clapped with smiles and laughter.

At this point Hanna said: “It seems like this weird dream I once had. In a room, with these people I have a strange connection with.” Everyone laughed. The women thanked Lillian “for the image, the celebration, the laughter.”

The group kept standing up, there seemed to be residue energy for more dancing.

So I offered to teach a dance and a song that I learned in elementary Jewish school. I

179 explained that the song was in Spanish and warned them that it was very Zionistic,

“because at the time we were very Zionistic,” I said. I asked the group to form a circle again, and showed them how the dance went. One person goes inside the circle while everyone outside is clapping and singing. This person chooses another person and both of them go inside the circle holding hands skipping together around the inside of the circle.

The first person returns to the circle and the second person stays in the circle and chooses a third person to come inside and skip around with, until everyone had a chance to go.

While I showed them the steps I also taught them the song in Spanish which translates to:

“along the paths that lead you to Eretz, there goes the Jewish youth battalion, singing this song, tra la, la, la, la, la, la.” Everyone took a turn. Each couple would skip in circles, laughing, and dancing being encouraged and celebrated by the outside circle of women who were clapping, singing, and laughing a lot. When the dance ended, I translated the song from Spanish to English. I explained that Eretz is the promised land, Israel.

Everyone laughed when they heard the translation.

Sarah shared how her grandfather used to sing Zionist songs in Yiddish. She wished she could capture them all. In response to Sarah’s sharing Hanna said:

It’s ironic that there are Zionist songs in Yiddish because Yiddish wasn’t allowed to be the national language [in Israel] because it was the language of the Jewish other in Europe. So Hebrew became the national language and we are supposed to forget Yiddish because it was tied to legacies of being effeminate, being other, not belonging. So to have a Zionist song sing in Yiddish is very… so interesting how Zionism unfolded from the Holocaust… so many ties to Jewish shame and the masculinization of Israel and the demasculinization of the Jew in Europe. It’s completely invisibilized and normalized.

During the lunch break the women sat together in a circle and, one by one, shared with each other more about themselves. They learned that Natalie was a singer. They talked about wanting to close the day with a song and asked me if we could do that; I

180 agreed to integrate it with my planned closing activity. At the end of the day we gathered, standing in a circle, almost shoulder to shoulder. Natalie started a Hebrew song which she taught to the group, “El Na Refa Na La,” and she explained that it means “please heal this one.” We joined her and sang for some time. Next, I encouraged people to share their appreciations. While each person shared, the others sang or hummed softly. Participants did not want to stop. They kept appreciating each other, laughing, crying, and singing.

In the written evaluation at the end of the day, when answering the question, “Did anything unexpected happen?” Natalie wrote, “I sang and cried at the same time!”

Isabella wrote that one of the most powerful moments of the day for her was dancing the hora.

How I Was Affected

I loved that Lillian had the impulse to dance. But when she actually got up, I felt resistance to join her. My body felt very heavy. As soon as I got up and joined, the heaviness lifted. I did not want to stop. Dancing horas reminded me of when, in my childhood, the rabbi would play his accordion while 400 children danced. Just as I did in my childhood, I felt extremely connected to the participants. It was as if we were being held by something larger.

Throughout the day I was very excited and touched that I was with a group of

Jewish women doing this work. I was excited that we were creating a community that was different than where I grew up. I also felt fear about whether I would be accepted.

Could I really just be me? Not conformist, feminist, non-traditional, critical, not wanting to follow someone else’s ideas of who I should be? Having Terri, who is not Jewish, as

181 my co-researcher was very moving for me. I had mixed reactions. I wondered: Could I trust her? Was her support real?

Imaginal Structures

I love to dance and to sing and feel most free and connected to people and spirit when I am doing so. When I dance, I forget who I am. I feel incredible joy and excitement. I can completely relax and let go. When I sing I can express and experience all range of emotions from sadness and melancholy to joy and ecstasy. Dancing and singing were the main Jewish practices that I loved to participate in when I was growing up. When I hear Jewish music as an adult I feel extremely moved and connected to my childhood, as well as to the ancestors.

I grew up in a strong and cohesive Jewish community that was incredibly stabilizing and provided holding for me when I was growing up. But the message I received was that I was supposed to create community only with Jews. I could not trust others. If I created community with others, I was being disloyal and betraying my ancestors and my tribe. I should not be able to be intimate and trustful of others because you never know when they are going to turn their backs on you. My job is to stay in the tribe.

A structure that arose in reaction to such expectations placed upon me about what role I could play in community is one that acts counter to whatever the expectations are. I connect with others that are not Jewish. There is room for me in spirituality, in politics, in academia, in the arts, in psychology. Men are not the only ones who know and have

182 authority. I do, too, in my own unique way. I can be a leader in the world, not just in the

Jewish community.

This imaginal structure was involved in my rejection of Judaism. I found it oppressive, both because it was sexist and also because the message growing up was that

I was either inside or outside but could not be in both. My reaction to this was to leave the Jewish community I grew up in. I feel uncomfortable when I am with a group of only

Jews. I am afraid that we are being exclusive. I am also afraid of being attacked by the outside. I do not feel that all of me is represented. There are more parts of me than just

Jewish and I am afraid I cannot be all.

Theoretical Concepts Assisting in These Interpretations

Essential for understanding this Learning is Omer’s thinking on ritual. He speaks about the necessity of ritual for the soul’s healing and that ritual is utilized to bear difficult times.41 Another relevant concept for this Learning is poiesis. Levine, referring to poiesis, the old Greek word for poetry and art-making, writes that “poiesis depends upon our willingness to stand aside and attend to the images which are given to us.” 42

He notes that the therapeutic power of the arts rests in its capacity to hold our suffering so we can bear the chaos without denial or flight.43

Omer’s definition of the ecstatic imperative is also useful for understanding this

Learning. According to Omer, “The term ecstatic imperative refers to the soul’s creative and symptomatic expression of its passionate and plural nature despite the constrictions of personal identity and requirements of conventional culture.” 44

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Serlin believes that people still carry a knowing in their bodies that relates to how the ancestors used the ancient traditions to express spirit and devotion.45 Yet, Hammer suggests that as a result of PTSD, Jews may avoid ecstatic states or expanded consciousness that may be engendered by profound engagement with Jewish ritual.46 In relation to this fear, Baranowsky et al. propose that as a result of trauma, survivors and descendants experience hypervigilence.47

Knapp notes that in response to persecution and assaults on Judaism, the Hasidic movement helped Jews survive by focusing on spiritual elation and joy through dance, song, and meditation.48 Fershtman proposes that healing intergenerational trauma is possible through use of ecstatic practices that have been reintroduced to today’s Jews through Jewish Renewal.49 Schachter-Shalomi state that from the 1960s until the present,

Jewish Renewal has been part of a movement that has introduced formerly secular and non-practicing Jews to the depth of Jewish myths and symbolism as well as rituals and ecstatic practices.50

Rosenberg observes that Jewish culture, which appears so mournful, uses grief as a pathway to the ecstatic.51 In reflecting upon the possibility of being happy even while suffering, Buxbaum suggests that even when a person is suffering they can experience happiness by connecting with God which is the world of joy.52

Gold proposes that chanting is an entrance into expanded states of consciousness.53 From those expanded states, we can have access to the fullness of our power to bless and to heal.

Another female archetype relevant to this learning is Miriam. Jewish feminists have reclaimed the Prophetess Miriam as a symbol of women’s power.54 She was not a

184 mother or a wife but she was the one who was healed. She was the healer and leader of women. In the torah it is written that after the liberation of Egypt, Miriam led the women in ecstatic dancing and victory song.

My Interpretations of What Happened

This Learning states: When third-generation women descendants explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women. Participants moved towards Jewish dance and song to hold them at the times of deepest grief and joy. Leaning into Levine’s thoughts about poiesis and Omer’s about the necessity of ritual for the soul’s healing, it was evident that participants brought ritual and poiesis as a way to help them integrate and metabolize grief and sorrow as well as express joy.55 They specifically called on

Jewish dance and song to accomplish this integration. Jewish liturgy is replete with songs of deep heartbreak and grieving as well as with songs and practices of joy. As Levine and

Omer indicate, when opening to the ecstatic, grief and joy flow in.

It was at the moment when the group was in the midst of the grief after sharing at the altar, that Lillian had the idea of dancing. Everyone arose and the group held grief while at the same time dancing and embracing joy. They responded similarly following the singing as people shed tears and felt joyous at the same time. Natalie, who chose the song and led the group in singing, referred to this paradox in her evaluation by saying that what surprised her was, “I sang and cried at the same time!” Rosenberg observes that

Jewish culture uses grief as a pathway to the ecstatic.

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As Knapp and Fershtman point out, ecstasy in Judaism has always been the response to heartbreak and despair. They observe that ancestors have been aware of the healing medicine of the ecstatic, and they have brought it during previous assaults on the

Jewish collective. The group of women moved towards Jewish practices to help them integrate what they were experiencing during the day. They reached out and used the healing practices that the ancestors have used for centuries to help them digest trauma.

As expressed by the women and authors such as Baranowsky et al. trauma causes survivors and descendants to fear that at any moment someone will come after them.

They experience hypervigilance. Hammer suggests that as a result of PTSD, Jews may avoid ecstatic states or expanded consciousness since entering into ecstatic states such as joy, love, and full presence in the moment requires a degree of undefendedness that is not possible to achieve with the hypervigilance that is caused by trauma. On the other hand, these practices can help hold and integrate one’s experience. Because third generation descendants are more removed from the traumatic events it is easier for them engage in these practices.

Jewish Renewal in its neo-Hasidic approach has been instrumental in reconnecting Jews with the ecstatic. Participants on the day of the study tapped into this knowing. Some had experienced it in childhood, while others continue to practice it in adulthood. For example, Natalie is part of a Jewish Renewal community and is the one who led the group chant.

Buxbaum, Gold, and Rosenberg discuss how particularly in Judaism, the Hasidic and Jewish Renewal movement, use sacred movement and chant to connect to the Divine.

It can be interpreted that the women connected to spirit through these practices. This

186 connection to spirit allowed them to be in their feelings as well as experience joy and freedom to be, instead of hypervigilance and guilt.

Serlin writes about how she realized that when her uncle dances and sings he is expressing devotion and spirit and that this was passed on to her and lives in her body. 56

The women participants tapped into what Serlin describes as the body knowing of these ancient traditions. They engaged what Omer calls the ecstatic imperative with their own unique way of freeing their spirit, which was shaped by their history and their cultural experiences, in this case, obviously Jewish. The participants demonstrated that personal, cultural, and archetypal experience shapes how a person experiences ecstatic experiences.

On the other hand, it can also be said that while they connected to the Jewish experience they also tapped into a universal experience that comes from being with a group of people sharing dance and song.

Isabella commented on the healing aspect of this process, saying, “I was surprised as to how allowing for fluidity of the exercises to unfold – as material arose – made healing possible.” Calling and bringing these practices could be interpreted as an act of being empowered. By doing so they gave themselves and each other permission to recover from the trauma. They wanted to be able to relax into the moment and be able to enjoy instead of feel tense.

When the dancing stopped, Liz shared that people experienced the Holocaust as demasculinization; therefore, after the Holocaust, especially in Israel, there was a rejection of the feminine. The feminine is being able to be, to sit with not knowing, being able to tolerate suffering, to love, to experience joy, to not have to do so much as be. By tapping into practices that could be qualified as feminine because they allow the person

187 and the group to be in the present, to experience joy as well as depth, the women brought their feminine quality and healing power which is needed to be able to recover from the

Holocaust. They tapped into their own power as healers, by moving towards their own healing, and bringing the feminine qualities to help in that process.

It is probably not a coincidence that the song that Natalie offered and the group sang at the end of the day is based upon a Bible passage that refers to Moses pleading to

God to heal his sister, Miriam, who was sick. The title of this song means “please heal this one.” This passage is one of the shortest verses in the Torah. Miriam is the healer as well as the one who is healed. She is the sister, the leader of women, not mother or wife.

As Raphael describes, Miriam leads the women in ecstatic singing and dancing to celebrate the liberation from Egypt. The men join them. In this way the women tap into the archetype of Miriam or Miriam comes through as they are also the ones who are healed and the healers, and reclaim their power to lead, to heal, the ones doing the work on healing intergenerational trauma. It might not be a coincidence that the majority of the people that responded to the call to participate in the research were women. Women are seeking healing and they are also the healers. They have powers they can bring that are needed to recover from the Holocaust. They can be the leaders. They are the leaders in this process.

Raphael notes that many believed that the Shekhinah was present when Miriam led the women in singing and dancing. Ginsburg notes that sacred dance stimulate the flow of energy and opens the blocked channels in the person and the cosmos. The individual as well as the Shekhinah are healed.

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Validity Considerations

The validity of this Learning is supported by the fact that participants engaged and reacted to dancing and singing so unanimously and enthusiastically. They spontaneously suggested these practices as a way to hold each other and the group. They were all relieved to have them. When the group danced, their body language expressed their deep joy, ecstasy, release, and being in the present. When the group sang, participants were incredibly moved. The time ended and they did not want to stop singing, humming, and holding each other. This Learning is further validated by participants sharing in their evaluations. One participant said, “I was surprised to sing and cry at the same time.” Others said that dancing the hora was “the most powerful moment of the day.” Participants expressed how validating, important and healing it was for them to re-create community with other Jewish women. They expressed wanting to continue meeting as a group.

Conclusion

To summarize, the first learning, “Stripping Naked,” states: when the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Being together with other third generation descendants was significant for the participants. It helped them open up and share about their experiences in ways they had not done before and to experience a sense of safety that helped them go deeper. It also helped them identify similarities among each other

189 and in that way become more aware of how the legacy impacts them and what is unique about their experience as third generation Jewish women.

The second learning is “Facing Ereshkigal.” This learning states, with the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair, and guilt.

Participants tapped and expressed a lot of feeling during the meeting. Communitas allowed the women to explore experience that perhaps they had not before in terms of feeling the grief, the rage, the despair that was really there but had been not been explored, expressed, or was unknown. Being able to be with the strong feelings and not die, or giving themselves and the group permission to be with such intense feelings was a relief as well as transformative and empowering. Being able to feel so much was life affirming and empowering. They found that they did not have to stay in the fear or depression or trauma but that they could feel and express in ways they had not done with their families or community. In this way they brought healing to feminine aspects such as being able to feel, to be in the moment, to grieve, and to express the depths of rage and to love.

The third learning is “The Helpers: Emergence of the Friend, in the Form of the

Ancestors,” states as follows: through engaging with Friend voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Working with the gatekeeping and Friend voices associated with their ancestors allowed psychic movement and healing for the participants. As a result of trauma, survivors tend to be afraid, be stuck in the trauma, and hypervigilent and they tend to pass these experiences on to the next generation. This way

190 of being has protective aspects for the person and their families. But is also becomes self- limiting in that it is does not allow the person to live freely, with spontaneity and without fear and survivor guilt. Because the third generation is more removed from the traumatic events they are in a position to be able to face these internalized negative and limiting voices. When the women faced these gatekeeping voices they realized that the ancestors are actually allies to them. They experienced the ancestors as internal and external resources that support them and want the best for them. The ancestors helped the women face and transmute the self-limiting and critical voices. They helped the women liberate themselves for survivor guilt.

The fourth Learning entitled “Re-emergence through Re-joining Community: We

Laughed and Cried at the Same Time,” states as follows: when third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon

Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women. Spontaneously bringing dancing and singing into the circle helped participants hold and integrate what they were feeling and also allowed them to feel connected and in community. Participants connected to Jewish practices that ancestors have used to help them hold loss and pain. They drew upon these practices to help them hold feeling, express joy, integrate, suspend survivor guilt, and connect with spirit. Connecting in this way with ancestral practices and resources as well as with each other was a balm to their experiences of exile, trauma, pain, and guilt. They also tapped into female archetypes such as Shekhinah, Lilith, and Miriam. Shekhinah was the mothering presence that brought mirroring and holding, Lilith was manifested through the rage that participants

191 felt and the desire for life and the myriad of feelings that come with it, to choose themselves, and claim their power and right to process the trauma. They connected with

Miriam who is the one who is healed and the healer as well as the leader but not the wife and mother.

The Research Problem for this study was: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? My research hypothesis was: As affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power.

The overarching learning for this research is: When third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered to explore and give voice to their experience, they processed the conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the broader community, communitas was created which brought healing about these experiences.

The study’s research question, hypotheses, and Learnings very much support each other because through this study, imaginal structures that are unique to third-generation women became more clear and conscious. By making them more conscious, participants were able to begin disidentifying from these imaginal structures and gain some freedom from the limitations they impose. Becoming aware and exploring various affective states

(such as grief, rage, despair, and guilt) gave the women had the opportunity to know themselves better and begin identifying what they needed to claim. By being able to delve into these affective states and survive them, the women were able to connect to a stronger and more empowered part of themselves; this included the ability to feel desire

192 instead of staying in the depression of the trauma. The women moved towards empowerment by giving themselves permission to process and recover from the trauma and work with the guilt that might come up in the process of doing such taboo work.

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CHAPTER 5

REFLECTIONS

Significance of the Learnings

Four key Learnings emerged from the study. First when the participants, third- generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Second with the safety that was created, the participants were able to sink into the unknown and face shadow aspects of their experience which included deep rage, grief, despair and guilt. Third through engaging with the Friend voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Fourth when third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small

Jewish community of women.

The Research Problem for this study was: What affective experiences and imaginal structures emerge in the process of disidentifying from survivor guilt and cultivating authentic power? The research hypothesis was: As affective experiences related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power.

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The Learnings are significant because first they show that the Holocaust still impacts the third generation. The women expressed how they were affected by the

Holocaust: For some, the trauma related to the Holocaust led to their family’s assimilation and loss of connection to Judaism. Others expressed how in their families certain emotions such as grief or anger were not allowed. Others expressed how they live either in terror and distrust of others or they spend their lives mourning the dead. Some of the women expressed feeling guilty for focusing on working on the Holocaust given that there are other genocides as well, but that the Holocaust gets more attention.

None of the women had ever processed the legacy of the Holocaust with another group of third generation members let alone a women only group. They all talked about how the opportunity to be with other third generation was powerful and moving. They felt they shared a common experience that was not usually talked about. Some of them were surprised to see how much they needed this space and how much there was to be processed and expressed. Being received and mirrored about this experience was also a new for some of them. Their shared experience of the newness made it safer to open up and explore feelings they were not conscious of. It was a relief to some to finally have a chance to realize how much the Holocaust has indeed affected them.

Another aspect that is significant about the Learnings is that the researcher allowed for flexibility and spontaneity to arise. The researcher followed the needs as well as the images that were arising for the participants. One of the participants observed that the fluidity of the exercises allowed for healing to happen. Since there was a sense of freedom within the framework of the study, the women took initiative in leading certain aspects of the day. It was unexpected that the group would dance, or sing, or engage in an

195 exercise around the expression of anger. The group moved towards such expression as a way to help themselves hold the affect they were feeling, including grief, anger, and joy.

These expressions were also a way to feel relief from survivor guilt and a way to integrate what was happening throughout the day. Some of the participants expressed how engaging in such practices were some of the most powerful and surprising moments of the day for them.

It is important to note that third generation is in a unique position in that they are more able to metabolize the trauma because they are farther away from it in comparison to the survivors and their families. There is a titration of the trauma that makes it possible for the third generation to work with the material that was overwhelming for the survivors and families. There is also a unique relationship between grandparents and grandchildren in that the relationship is much gentler than what exists between parent and child. The gentleness allows for a kind of compassion that supports this generation in transforming the trauma. While the second generation absorbed the trauma and had to carry it for the survivors, for the third generation this is not the case. However, the third generation was a recipient of the trauma via their parents. Individuation and differentiation from the second generation is necessary in order to disidentify from the messages they received which might be limiting the third generation from being in their own power and life-force.

Given the research findings, the hypothesis could be modified to say that as affective experiences and imaginal structures related to survivor guilt are increasingly recognized and tended to one can access more freedom to cultivate one’s authentic power. Two things happened in the day of the study that led to this modification.

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Participants tapped into the affective experiences related to the trauma that they still carry related to the Holocaust including survivor guilt. They also looked at imaginal structures and worked with them through the gatekeeper and Friend voice. They worked through messages that as women they received in relation to the role of women and how the messages tied to their grandparents surviving the Holocaust. The messages were that they are to be loyal to the tribe and to family instead of engaging in a life that is different. As participants delved into affective states and became aware and processed internalized self-negating voices they moved into authentic power which includes choosing themselves instead of what is expected of them, allowing themselves to recover from trauma, individuating from the second generation and being able to be in the present instead of being hypervigilent as well as being in their full force, power, desires instead of depression. The final activity was the context for the strongest expression of this power as they brought forward wishes for themselves and the next generation, giving permission to live and be happy in their own way. They wished healing for all, including the ancestors.

Mythic and Archetypal Reflections

The journey that the women embarked on the research day and the Learnings that come out of it may be understood through the following myths and stories.

The Descent

The myth of Inanna-Ishtar and Ereshkigal known as “The Descent of Inanna” can be used to put the participants’ journey into perspective. Perera notes that this Sumerian

197 myth about the descent of and to the goddess is the oldest known myth with this theme, written on clay tablets in the third millennium B.C.1 The summary of this myth that follows is drawn from Perera’s telling of the story.

Inanna is the queen of heaven and earth. She learns of the death of her sister

Ereshkigal’s husband and decides to pay a mourning call. Ereshkigal had been raped and carried off to underworld by her husband many years before. Now, at the time of his death, Inanna puts her ear to the ground, which is the Sumerian way of saying she seeks wisdom. Queen Inanna adorns herself with ceremonial jewelry and clothing and begins her perilous journey downward. She places her female ally Ninshubur at the point of her descent, instructing her to seek help in case she does not return after three days. At the first gate Inanna is stopped and asked to declare herself. The gatekeeper informs

Ereshkigal, Queen of the Great Below, that Inanna Queen of Heaven, wants to attend her husband’s funeral. Ereshkigal is furious and insists that she be “treated according to the laws and rites for anyone entering her kingdom – that she be brought ‘naked and bowed low.’” 2 As Inanna passes through each of the seven gates on her way to the underworld, she is forced to shed her protective garments. Finally, when she arrives naked, Ereshkigal kills her. She hangs her corpse on a hook and Inanna turns into rotting meat. After three days, Ninshubur, following Inanna’s instructions, goes to Enlil, the highest god of sky and earth and to Nanna, the moon god and Inanna’s father. Both refuse to help out.

Finally, Ninshubur obtains help from Enki, the god of waters and wisdom, who dispatches two little mourners he creates from the dirt under his fingernail. The diminutive size of these two creatures allows them to pass through the seven gates. When they enter the throne room, they find Ereshkigal groaning over the dead. She is grateful

198 for empathy and the nourishment they brought to her, and offers them a gift of their choosing as a reward. They request the corpse of Innana. Although the Queen tries to dissuade them, she eventually grants their favor and releases Inanna to the upper world, revived and renewed.3 In return for her release, Inanna must choose someone else from the upper world to replace her in the underworld. She chooses Dumuzi, her husband, who did not mourn her death but sits enjoying himself on his throne.

It could be interpreted that by agreeing to participate in the research, the women embarked on a journey into the collective as well as the personal underworld. They had a willingness to submit to how they day was going to unfold and to how it was going to touch them. They had some basic trust that they were going to be contained and somehow meet some darker aspect of themselves and hopefully there could be some movement.

Perera remarks that “[Inanna] descends, submits, and dies. This openness to being acted upon is the essence of the experience of the human soul faced with the transpersonal. It is not based upon passivity, but upon an active willingness to receive.” 4 The participants were willing to be acted upon in the sorrow, pain, shame, and anger and have it transformed in some way.

Becker comments that the Inanna myth is a story about individuation.5 Although

Inanna was powerful, she was not completely autonomous or integrated within herself.

She lived in the upper world and did not know about suffering the way Ereshkigal did. As she made her descent she became humbled. By being hung on a hook and rotting for three days, she learned something about suffering.

Becker explains that individuation is the coming into oneself, integrating the opposites, holding the darkness and the light, being with the known and the unknown,

199 coming to a sense of oneself across a huge expanse, holding the suffering and the negativity as well as the sense of the divine in oneself.6 Until one acknowledges one’s darkness and goes into a descent it is hard to own that space.

In going down Inanna had to become humble, suffer, and know death. Going into a descent is a form of dying; in order to be renewed again one must be willing to face such death. In so doing, one learns something of the fiber of one’s being, and what one has inside to support survival. Sometimes it is not possible to feel that fiber until that deep darkness is prevalent.

In Perera’s discussion of the world of Ereshkigal, she notes that this goddess, like many others, is wounded and experiences loss and separation.7 Such goddesses do not avoid suffering but engage with it and express its reality. Perera expands on this:

…suffering is a primal way. It is a sacrifice of activity, which can lead even to rebirth and illumination when it is accepted as a way to let be… It is the place of the powerlessness of chaotic and numb or unchanneled affect, the lonely grief- rage of powerlessness and unassuaged loss and longing… We can only endure, barely conscious, barely surviving the pain and powerlessness, suspended out of life, stuck, until and if, some act of grace with some new wisdom arrives. Such raw, impersonal, though potentially initiating miseries are Ereshkigal’s domain.8

Ereshkigal represents the dark parts of ourselves that we might be afraid to feel such as the pain, the grief, and loss. When Ereshkigal gets mirroring and empathy from the two little beings made out of earth and dirt, she feels relieved. She is not alone anymore.

The mirroring that she received in her suffering is significant and relevant to what the participants’ experienced. The fact that the participants were with a group of other third generation members may had allowed them to enter into their own depth and darkness because they felt safer as well as mirrored. They mirrored each other, bringing the mothering that was needed to be able to break apart. The little beings are made out of

200 earth. Earth is mother. Participants experienced enough mothering, comfort, and nourishing. The presence of the Friend allowed for something different that they had not experienced in their families and culture. Here in this day they could feel the grief, the rage, the shame, and work with the guilt. It is interesting that during the meeting the researcher spontaneously offered to the group the song and dance about Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel). Perhaps for the earlier generations, this was the promise of “earth,” a promise that subsequent generations are finding is fraught with complexity.

In addition to bringing mirroring for Ereshkigal, the little beings also brought food and sustenance, something of life. In the study, after being in the suffering, the women moved towards life. Perera observes that, “not for humankind’s sins did Inanna sacrifice herself, but for earth’s need for life and renewal. She is concerned more with life than with good and evil.” 9 Participants wanted relief for themselves and the future generations. They found that the ancestors wanted them to move towards a full life. They did not have to stay in the suffering and pain and survivor guilt. According to Becker, among survivors and second-generation survivors of the Holocaust there was resentment and bitterness about the denial of life and of the inability to really live.10 Many Holocaust survivors and their children had difficulty moving on and moving passed the pain. There was a way that people did not know how to give themselves sustenance; they were not allowed to feel the aliveness because of the survivor guilt. Becker remarks, “They did not have those little creatures bringing some sustenance from the sun and the earth, metaphorically speaking.” 11

Having survived suffering one comes back with fierceness. When Inanna ascended to the upper world and had to select someone to replace her in the underworld,

201 she chose Dumazi because he was not in touch with his own suffering. It could be said that choosing him was an act of loving kindness, because he was going to be transformed, he was going to have to experience his own suffering in order to become whole, for he was not experiencing any of the feminine.

The feminine is being able to be, to sit with not knowing, to love, being able to tolerate suffering, not having to do so much as much as be. Perera writes that “[Inanna] needs to return to the dark, unacceptable feminine goddess to renew her own potency…restructured, reborn in an inner process and connected to the full range of feminine instinctual patterns.” 12 Individuation is being able to develop those parts of ourselves that were undeveloped and that hold the opposites, to know when it is time to be and when it is time to do, to be able to hold the dark and the light. In this way, one moves towards wholeness, individuation, and authentic power.

Gottlieb comments on this process, as follows:

(T)he descent tales, the rebirth of the forgotten sister/self happens through the medium of empathy. As we learn from the Torah, “love your kin as you love yourself ”… Jewish women are learning to love the abandoned and exiled elements of our soul. Those parts of ourselves cast off by the patriarchal world are slowly becoming acceptable… we can never return to a myth that does not honor our most sacred quest, the quest to wholeness of being.13

Following is another archetype, that of the Jewish goddess Lilith, that helps explain what the participants evoked when connecting with repressed feminine qualities and reclaiming their power, which also helped counter the guilt and survivor guilt.

Embracing Lilith: Meeting the Dark side of the Divine Feminine

Hurwitz explains that in Jewish mythology, Lilith is the carrier of the Shadow

Feminine.14 Fershtman cites Hurwitz and explains that facing the Lilith aspect of one’s

202 own consciousness requires entering the realm of the dark feminine, in which wherein lie grief, rage, and loss.15 In our culture, Lilith’s powerful energy has been exiled. When this aspect of consciousness is repressed, it manifests as depression. Integrating Lilith requires turning towards our depression. According to Fershtman, “to access Lilith’s powerful gifts of the chthonic feminine, one must be willing to feel the pain and grief that has been disowned and avoided.” 16

Lilith chooses not to be oppressed by patriarchy. She is a symbol of feminine power and independence. She chooses herself instead of succumbing to and obeying a higher authority. The women in the research study talked about wanting to have freedom to feel “all of it,” including the rage and the grief, their passions and desires. They want to have their own experience instead of having to carry the burden of the trauma. They do not want to follow the path of procreation for the sake of continuing the tribe or following tradition but want to be happy in their relationships and not feel shame about their sexuality. They were embodying Lilith, who did not want to be oppressed, dominated, and follow pressures to be a certain way. They wanted to claim their own authority including the ability to face trauma, feel the grief, the rage, and the despair, and by doing so, recover from it. The participants sought to claim their right to be able to live with desire, passion, and permission to do what they want to do instead of staying in the fear and survivor guilt.

Becker comments that Lilith had undigested rage and shame.17 She was shunned for asserting her own independence and autonomy. She was alienated, lonely and ashamed. As a result, Lilith carried a destructive force but did not have anyone to help her digest this destructive force. This destructive force is in each of us. The women in

203 this study were conflicted about feeling and expressing this destructive and rageful force that might be in them. On the one hand, this conflict can be interpreted as related to their not knowing if they had the permission to fully embody the anger that they felt. On the other hand, it could be related to Becker’s comments about the tendency for a survivor or a descendant to defend against knowing that there is a destructive force inside because of the ugliness and horror that such a force brought to their families.18 Although what happened in the Holocaust is on a very different scale, Becker believes that not owning that part of ourselves makes healing harder. If we defend against how brutal the

Holocaust was, we defend against our own brutality. In order for healing to happen, it is necessary to acknowledge and not deny acts of unkindness and lapses of generosity and genuineness. We need to be able to acknowledge our wholeness, which includes our own rage and aggression, because it is not until we do that that we will be able to see others and ourselves for everything that we are. Accessing this power also helps us see ourselves not only as victims but also as powerful and, in some cases perpetrators.

Knowing that we are like the other instead of being superior or different helps with healing as it helps us feel more a part of the world than separate. If everyone is able to acknowledge their own destructive force and aggression, then we can move towards being more conscious of our actions.

Moving towards authentic power for third generation Jewish women then means giving ourselves permission to be fully alive: to be passionate, have desires, be able to let go and be and trust, as well as acknowledge the destructive force in us and others. In that way we are with the pretty and the ugly, life and death, creation and destruction. Lilith is the symbol of this: she stands up for life and also represents death. She chooses to live

204 with all of life, instead of living oppressed in paradise, which then it turns out not to be paradise.

Embracing Miriam: The Healer and the One Who is Healed

According to Raphael, Jewish feminists are reclaiming the Prophetess Miriam as the strong leader of women, the sister, teacher, healer and midwife.19 She is not a mother or a wife. She is the healer and the one who is healed.

Raphael examines two contemporary songs based on the image of Miriam leading the women dancing: “Miriam - By the Shores” by Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael and

“Miriam’s Song” by Debbie Friedman.20 These songs, written in the 1980’s are used liturgically in Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal communities. They reflect a new vision of Judaism emerging out of contemporary Jewish women’s experience.

In both songs Miriam and the Hebrew women are ecstatically dancing and singing together in joyous celebration after being liberated from Egyptian slavery.21 Miriam is portrayed as a powerful woman who leads others in dances and songs of victory. In ancient Mesopotamia there were similar types of victory celebrations performed by women and led by priestesses. Raphael remarks that traditionally men who comment on the Torah have completely ignored this motif.

The songs also depict how through ecstatic and joyous dance and song the women are able to put aside, if not completely eliminate, the great pain and oppression they have experienced. The songs depict men joining the women and thus they celebrate together as allies and friends. According to Raphael, “this image reflects a new vision of the Jewish

205 life in which supportive men and powerful women collaborate and co-participate in the divine service and in the collective transformation of Judaism.” 22

One of the songs describes how the Shekhinah is present when the women are singing and dancing. God is in full glory when women dance together. Raphael remarks that this image of divinity defines feminist-inspired Judaism in the twenty-first century.23

Embracing and reclaiming the archetype of Miriam can help third generation women process the conflict that they experience in response to the pressures and expectations to be lineage bearers. Miriam does not marry and have children. She is the leader of women, she sings victory songs, and she is the healer and the healed. It could be said that the women in this study tapped into Miriam. They brought feminine aspects such as dancing, singing, and ritual to their work together. They led each other in singing and dancing, as they processed the horrors of the Holocaust as well as the oppression they felt as third generation descendants. They were seeking healing and while they did so, they were the healers. They embodied the capacity to be the leader within Judaism but also in the world. They explored taboo territory, stood up for transformation and healing, and claimed their capacity to be with all of life, including working towards our evolution and transformation.

Tikkun Olam: Transformation of the Self and the World

According to Schwartz, Rabbi Nachman explains the concept of Tikkun as an internal process, one of healing and repair.24 This process takes place simultaneously on a personal level and a collective level. Thus, the concept of Tikkun Olam which means repair of the world, is part of the last major myth added to Jewish tradition in the

206 sixteenth Century. Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari, elaborated this myth as one of his greatest gifts to Jewish tradition. This myth illustrates the Jewish vision of the very process of restoration and transformation. According to this cosmological myth, at the beginning of time God sent forth vessels bearing primordial light. No one knows why the vessels shattered and scattered their sparks throughout the world. This is the first phase known as the “shattering of the vessels.” Schwartz understands this as the symbolic equivalent to other cosmic catastrophes, such as the destruction of the Temple in

Jerusalem or the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.25

The second phase is called “gathering the sparks.” The purpose of this phase is to collect the fallen sparks. Through mitzvot, good deeds and ritual, the scattered sparks are raised up. This is the definition of Tikkun, of healing a world that has become broken.

According to the myth, a person’s deeds serve directly to transform and restore the world.

This process and transformation occurs within the person as well. The myth is a healing one, focused on the processes of breaking apart and restoring.26

Schwartz proposes that from a Jungian perspective, the shattering of the vessels might be understood in individual terms as a breakdown.27 It represents a breaking through of the unconscious at a time of psychic transition. On the collective level, it represents a time of upheaval such as the destruction of the Temple and of the many other crises in Jewish history. According to Schwartz:

The gathering of the sparks represents the process of restoration on both the individual and collective levels that ultimately achieves the kind of psychic balance known as individuation... And we note that the developmental sequence of the Ari’s myth requires the shattering to take place before the restoration, indicating that the shattering is an essential phase of this process, as well as an inevitable one.28

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During the research day, participants allowed themselves to fall apart in ways they had not done before. They talked about how previous to this day they had not necessarily done much processing about the impact that the Holocaust had upon them and their families. They felt the grief, the pain, the loss, and the guilt in a way that they had not done before. This breaking apart, to use Schwartz’ term, is necessary for transformation to take place. Third generation descendants are in a position to fall apart and feel the pain, the fear, the anger, the grief related to the Holocaust. By facing going into the shadow they can transform these feelings and transform themselves. They can also work towards healing the brokenness of the world. Third generation descendants are in a position to metabolize the trauma in a different way than past generations because they are more removed from the trauma, yet close enough that they are affected. They are in a unique position by which they might carry out this transformative work for the past and future generations if they have access and support to do so. Participants explicitly stated during the research that they wanted to pass on knowledge without the burden. The participants engaged in a ritual of transformation and restoration for the present and the future. They engaged in something different than what was done in their families or their communities – they directly dealt with the trauma of the Holocaust. In this way they were showing indications of individuating personally and also as a generation. They sought healing that others were not seeking with the purpose of gaining psychic balance.

Referring to the Tikkun Olam story and other Jewish tales, Schwartz notes, “The kind of survival indicated in these tales often requires radical transformation of the self, in order to achieve the kind of psychic balance found in individuation.” 29 This transformation may happen if we allow ourselves to work and metabolize the trauma, the

208 intergenerational trauma, instead of remaining locked in the trauma and passing it on. If this kind of individual work and collective work takes place, then it may influence the world at large because the way people engage with each other may gradually become different. Evolution and communal individuation will be supported. The personal will change the global. The Tikkun myth addresses how ritual is one of the ways humans can move towards healing themselves and the world. It could be argued that in this way, the study itself repaired a little bit of the world.

Drob remarks that Tikkun Olam can be equated with the discovery of the roots of one’s soul.30 It is a process through which the person discovers their unique spiritual task in life. Tikkun Olam involves the extraction of the divine light.31 The divine light is inside the pieces of the broken vessel. The broken vessels can be understood using Jung’s concept of the shadow. The process of extraction requires a descent into one’s shadow.

The shadow carries the repressed aspects of ourselves. The women confronted the shadow and the unconscious. They met and expressed anger and rage and guilt about healing., They made conscious and faced the messages they have received and embraced a powerful force inside of them that can be destructive. Through this process they brought some repair to themselves, moved towards wholeness, and connected with the inner light and spark of their own spiritual task. Perhaps their spiritual task involves their power to transform the brokenness that has been passed on to them as well as the brokenness that exists in the world. Such potential for transformation may be the power that the third generation holds.

Drob notes that the breaking of the vessels is also understood as a break between the masculine and feminine energies, which maintain the harmony of the worlds.32 When

209 this happened the Shekhinah was exiled. The cosmic balanced is restored when the masculine and feminine aspects of God are reunited. In order to complete the world there needs to be acts that unify the opposites. A Jungian way to understand this is through the process of making the unconscious conscious as well as becoming aware of the shadow.

In order to bring harmony, the Shekhinah needs to be reunited with the male energy. When trauma occurs, the feminine is exiled. Feminine energies are equated with being, instead of doing. Such energies make it possible to let go instead of remaining hypervigilant and fearful, as well as to feel grief, rage, love, and connection to the mother earth. The participants in the study were all women. They brought their female qualities and a desire to heal the feminine. There was holding, mirroring, spontaneous ecstatic practice, and being with the feelings. Working and processing trauma involves facing the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers intrude with one’s own process and does not allow for much spontaneity. In contrast, the women in the study were able to be spontaneous. As one of the participants said, “being flexible and spontaneous allowed healing to happen.”

Implications of the Study

For Participants

Participating in the study was very significant for the participants because it was the first time that they were with a group of other third-generation women. It was an opportunity to learn more about themselves and to risk going into places in themselves that they had not been before. What was surprising was that they guided the process as much as I did. I think it was significant that the women allowed ecstatic dance and song

210 to come in and that they brought it into the meeting. It was significant that they were with other Jewish women creating communitas.

There was such bonding during that day that they expressed desire to continue doing the work together. There was an acknowledgment that this legacy was significant, even though it was taboo for them to be doing this work. In the initial interviews some expressed hesitation about focusing too much on the Holocaust when there are other genocides that have happened and others are suffering more or still. It was also new territory to talk and process the legacy because the message they received was, not necessarily to process it, but to never forget it and to keep carrying the burden instead of transforming it. It is very significant that at the end of the day, when participants sent messages to the ancestors and the future generations many of them expressed wishes for the future generation as well as for the ancestors to carry the knowledge of what happened without the heavy burden. They also wished for other third generation as well as descendants of historical trauma to gather in groups like the one they had formed that day, because it was important to process, talk about, and transform what had been passed down to them. They learned that that they have the capacity and the power to go to painful and hard places and metabolize what was there including facing negative and critical voices and survive all of it. They learned about their capacities and powers as healers. It was a very significant process that they had not experienced before. As one of the participants said the day after the study, “it was the most potent day of my life.”

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For Myself

The main learnings that I come away with from writing this dissertation are: First,

I have guilt about recovering from the Holocaust. Second, in order to recover from the

Holocaust and find my own voice as a third generation descendant, I have to work through my fear and guilt about individuating and differentiating from the second generation. Third, I can ask the ancestors for their help and support. In other words, it is taboo to heal from the Holocaust. It is taboo to not feel guilty. It is taboo to individuate from the second generation. Writing this dissertation and allowing myself voice is taboo and revolutionary. I feel guilt, shame, rage, and extreme excitement. I finally feel it in my gut that the ancestors are with me.

Dreams: Around the time of my dissertation defense, two years into the process of writing it, I asked for a dream that would inspire the title of the dissertation. Soon after the defense, I finally had two dreams. In the first dream, I am sitting in a big dining room.

There are many tables with people sitting around them. It could have been a communal

Shabbat dinner. I am sitting at one of the tables with my mother and my father each sitting by my side. I am wearing a long white dress. I am asked to read out loud from a text that I have in front of me. It is in Hebrew. Perhaps it is the Torah. As soon as I start reading, an older woman who is sitting at a different table in front and to the right starts reading out loud with me. I follow her. She is my Hebrew helper. I feel the most confident and comfortable in my own skin that I have ever felt. I am elated. When I finish reading I understand that what I read was the story of my life. I feel incredibly validated and supported. In the next scene I am with one of the Rabbis that I grew up with in

Colombia. He is a Lubavitch that came from the United States when I was in my early

212 teens. In the dream, he says to me that I am being very naïve. I woke up at that moment. I was confused and angry at the Rabbi’s comment. I felt insecure. However, I could still feel the sense of security and contentment in my gut. I smiled.

Within the conservative Jewish community I grew up in, I could not read the

Torah. Men were the ones who had access to reading it and leading the religious services.

In my late teenage years I could feel the sexism in the community and in the religion, even though I did not have words to name it. Whenever the Lubavitch rabbi would visit my family he wanted to know how my brother was doing in his studies. In relation to me, he would comment that I was cute and a good girl. Even to this day, his main concern is whether I am going to get married and have children.

In my experience as a Jewish woman growing up in Colombia, being a scholar is taboo. However, I now claim my right to know, to speak, and contribute insight. I claim my right as a scholar and leader.

The dream reflects the process of healing my relationship to Judaism that I have been going through by writing this dissertation. I claim my right to connect with Judaism in a way that is meaningful to me and in a way that I feel reflects my values and my own path. I left my Jewish community and Judaism as a teenager because at that point in my development I experienced it as oppressive. Engaging with my identity as a Jew through this dissertation has opened me to a tradition that I did not know before, a tradition where women have been re-claiming and reshaping their space and the religion. I claim my right to choose what I like and rejoice in what feels right. I claim it as mine, and recognize that it is not just a man’s opportunity. I can be a serious scholar and sacred group leader. I claim that power, and as such, help transform the religion for all generations. I also claim

213 my right to decide how much I engage in Judaism, and how I weave it with other experiences that I value which are not Jewish but are rather of my own making and true to me. When I was born I belonged to one community; I now choose to belong, and I belong to much more than just one community.

Two nights after I had the first dream, another significant dream came to me. This is the dream that inspired the title of the dissertation. I am a kickboxer. I am standing up kicking with one leg and doing 360 degrees flips around my axis. I am in full force.

While I am doing this I am being broadcasted on TV. The image of me as a kickboxer is interrupted with images of starving Holocaust survivors. Then the kickboxer comes up again on the screen juxtaposing the emaciated survivors. I woke up from the dream while

I was still kickboxing. I felt incredibly powerful in my body. It was exhilarating. I loved being in my skin.

What this dream brings up is another taboo that I am breaking by writing this dissertation. Talking about the Holocaust as well as recovering from it is taboo. The message that I received was to not process it, but instead to carry it. The kickboxer confronts it, and does not let one get carried away by it. The kickboxer does not want to be a victim, oppressed by the Holocaust but rather wants to transform and find the power, the right to a life, to my own life. The kickboxer works with the guilt that comes up around healing and claims permission to not feel guilty.

The kickboxer does not turn away from the Holocaust but like the participants and

Inanna, turns towards it with humility and courage. She turns it around and around, digests and metabolizes it, takes it in but does not get defeated by it. In fact, the process makes her stronger. I know that I, the kickboxer, am stronger because I now feel that I

214 can hold the Holocaust stories and pain in a way that I was completely overwhelmed by it before I started writing the dissertation.

The kickboxer does not want to be oppressed by the trauma and does not want to stay in the trauma. She wants to have power, force, be able to be in the world openly, being able to defend herself, but also be able to enjoy, engage, live passionately, and with force. Experience life in my own way instead of through the eyes of the past generations or for the past generations. In fact, the ancestors root for the kickboxer to enjoy being fully alive. The kickboxer is not paralyzed by guilt, but claims her right to be. She celebrates and fights for the survival and thriving of all beings.

Voice: I have learned that part of my transformative process includes individuating from the second generation and their worldviews. This process has been both very rewarding and challenging but an important developmental step. The work of second generation descendants as well as the Jewish renewal movement has been very important to the development and healing of many. We must acknowledge and honor the work that has come before us. This includes perspectives and worldviews that my committee members as well as advisors have offered me. It has been partly through consideration and working with their perspectives and knowledge that I have been able to come to my own.

The process of coming to my own conclusions and voice my experience has been very contentious and difficult as I have felt the need to be loyal and respect authority. For example, while some may believe that as a Jew it is impossible to not feel guilty or to recover from the Holocaust, I want to believe that it is possible to live guilt-free. While some strongly acknowledge the work of the Jewish renewal movement in helping us heal

215 trauma, in my experience it is my ability to choose my own truth and my own way, which may include Judaism or not, that is liberating.

I have been afraid that I will get hurt or that I will hurt others if I think differently.

I might doubt my own truth. However, staying in the struggle and not giving up my own experience, truth, and voice has made me stronger and I believe it is what is going to make the third generation voice strong and powerful. Accessing my authentic power is tapping the capacity to voice my own experience and truth and not give in for fear that I am wrong or that I need to take care of the past generations.

For My Future

I want to continue working with the theme of intergenerational trauma and using methodologies such as drama therapy and expressive arts therapy to bring together various groups. Through my work with The Cultural Conservancy, I want to continue learning from and contributing when possible to the cultural healing and sovereignty of indigenous communities.

A dream of mine is to go back home to Colombia and work with the victims of war. In this case, I would be working with people who have been directly affected by the war but also their families and generations within the families.

In my practice as a psychologist intern I already have become more aware of issues of survivor guilt and intergenerational trauma. I would like to continue studying and writing about these topics so that psychotherapists can be more knowledgeable. I would like to conduct workshops with psychotherapists on how to work with clients who are descendants of historical trauma.

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For My Research Population

This study is very important for third generation descendants of the Holocaust because it demonstrates that this generation is affected. As participants pointed out, this generation does not have adequate space to process their experience. Many of the participants in this study expressed guilt about working with post-Holocaust trauma because the topic has been overly discussed and they feel there are other genocides that do not get as much attention. This study demonstrates that this generation still needs the attention and the space to be able to metabolize how the Holocaust has affected third generation members. Of special importance is creating a space for this generation to come together to do this work.

Because the participants were all women, this study shows that it is also important for third generation women to come together and process the legacy. There are specific messages women received and they can help each other work through these messages that relate to being a woman and being a descendant. It can be said that the bonding that participants experienced was due in part to the fact that they were all women. This helped participants to feel safe and go deep into their affect and experience. As such they experienced the capacity for holding, mothering, and female power.

For Other Constituencies for Whom the Research is Relevant

This research study comes out in a timely manner as in the culture there is starting to be more willingness and ability to consider that there is intergenerational trauma and that there are ways in which we are unconscious as to how these traumas affect us today.

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It seems that as a broader culture, we are trying to take responsibility for some of the traumas of the past.

What I have explored in this study is relevant to any population or group that has been targeted in a systematic way. Although there are cultural and historical differences between the groups, the dynamics studied here are relevant. The road to empowerment for any particular group could include some of the methods and tools used in this study.

For Psychology

There are various beliefs and issues pertaining to the Holocaust that are in the way of Jewish people processing and metabolizing the trauma that they still experience. On one hand, there is the belief is that individuals carry trauma forever and it is not possible to process it and transform it. On the other hand there is the belief that Jews should be over the Holocaust because it happened in the past and is not affecting third generation.

Another experience which the participants in this study talked about is shame about focusing on the Holocaust because it has been talked about too much compared to other genocides. The findings in this study show that third generation still needs a place to process how they are affected.

Intergenerational trauma is a topic that has been studied widely in psychology.

However, this study demonstrates that more needs to be done about how to process the trauma, including survivor guilt that has been passed down through generations.

Psychotherapists need to be aware that their clients with a history of historical trauma might be affected but might or might not be aware of how the trauma continues to affect them. It is important that psychotherapists hold the space for the clients to metabolize the

218 trauma when the timing is right. They should validate their clients pertaining to the possibility of such effects and should be ready to provide mirroring and empathy because many of them might not have received it before in the way that they truly need it.

If a therapist is not Jewish, their professional responsibility is to be informed and prepared to enter a journey with the client, to have the appropriate capacities and skills to support the clients along the way, or at least to learn along the way. They do not have to know everything but it is important that they have some consciousness. If the therapists are not-Jewish and are from a targeted group it is important for them to be able to deal with the ways Jewish survivor guilt may trigger their own survivor guilt and that they are aware that each group experiences historical trauma differently. For Jewish therapists working with Jewish clients, it is important that they do their own work and become conscious of how the legacy impacts them.

There is taboo about metabolizing post-Holocaust trauma and perhaps other historical traumas that affect other populations. Similar to the history of work with rape victims who at first were chastised as always wanting the abuse, it is possible to process historical trauma. The more open and available therapists and teachers are about the possibility for healing, the more methodologies such as ones used in this study that might facilitate the process, the more that psychological theory addresses such experiences, the more the trauma will be transformed and taboo will be diminished. When society sees that the trauma does not ruin the person or the collective permanently, then more creative ways will emerge for the individuals and the collective to process it. Humanity does perform atrocities and cause suffering but that fact does not mean that people and groups cannot heal from it and evolve.

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For Jewish Institutions

Educational, religious, and Jewish community groups must provide ways for

Jewish people to process and metabolize the trauma. Experiences such as the “March of

The Living” which involves taking youth to concentration camps in Poland can be re- traumatizing and can reinforce the fear of persecution. These kinds of experiences need to be coupled with ways for the youth to process the affect and the guilt they might be feeling. Otherwise survivor guilt will continue to be passed on to future generations.

As demonstrated in this study, the re-creation of community and the use of ritual and Jewish ecstatic practices are integral in helping transform intergenerational trauma and survivor guilt.

Recommendations for Further Study

The study demonstrated that there is a well of experiences and processing that still needs to be done among third generation. At the end of the day, participants expressed wanting to continue working together. This study would have benefited if it lasted one or two more days. Because the participants had a lot of affect and emotion that had not been previously tapped and expressed in a group context, I had in the moment, decided to change the plan and allow for more time during the activities, especially during the sharing of the ancestral and personal stories. A longer study would have allowed the group to explore in more depth the issue of guilt and shame. Because survivor guilt is usually visible through its derivatives, an activity that addressed guilt more directly would have benefited this study so as to bring more in-depth understanding to the specific guilt messages that third generation members receive and the imaginal structures related

220 to guilt that participants have. Some of the areas that could be further studied are guilt associated with having power and authentic power as it relates to historical trauma and guilt about healing the historical trauma.

Something that was not explored directly in this study is the relationship between third generation and second generation. Further study is needed on the relationship between third generation and second generation and how moving towards authentic power for the third generation calls for individuating from the second generation.

Another interesting area of inquiry would be to research the effects of the

Holocaust on third-generation males. The Learnings from this study are relevant to both males and females. However, there are findings that are particular to women given that the group was all women. What are the gatekeepers and imaginal structures related to post-Holocaust trauma and survivor guilt that are particular to males? What do they need to transform and what do the need to re-claim and how would they do it?

Another compelling area of study might be a reflection on how the beliefs that

Jews have about “chosenness” might make it harder to recover from trauma. One of the reasons why trauma becomes PTSD is because of the pre-existing conditions before the trauma happened. How do issues of exile and anti-Semitism, as well as arrogance, control, and “choseness” make it harder to recover from post-Holocaust trauma? How does the belief of Jews that they are special and have to stay pure, therefore, together and separate from others, make recovering from trauma harder? How does this belief contribute to feelings of anger, burden, superiority, inferiority, exclusiveness, and wanting to and not wanting to identify as Jewish?

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Another related exploration is how the work of metabolizing past traumas contributes to building connectivity not just with ancestors and future generations but also with other communities. Working with historical trauma could have multidimensional effects: the past, the future, and the present in terms of broader communities. Lastly, a critical question that needs to be asked is: What kind of difference would it make if this work were to be done in Israel?

APPENDIX

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APPENDIX 1

ETHICS APPLICATION

1. The participant population for this study will be comprised people who consider

themselves third generation descendants of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust and

who are interested in exploring issues related to this legacy. Participants will have

capacity for self-reflection, a willingness to explore deep emotions, and a

commitment to self-knowledge. Participants may be motivated to participate in the

study because they want to further explore the legacy of the Holocaust. I plan to

recruit participants through various personal as well as professional networks. I will

contact these people and communities by talking to people as well as by sending an

email with a flyer for distribution. There will be about eight to 10 participants.

2. Participants will contact me if they are interested in participating in the study. They

can call me or email me. My contact information will be on the flyer (see Appendix

10.) See Appendix 11 for script on this first contact phone call. If participants qualify

for the screening interview we will set up a meeting time that will happen within the

next eight days. The screening interview will last half an hour and I will ask them

background questions about their personal and family history as well as their

experience with psychotherapy. In Appendix 12 see screening interview script and

questionnaire. Once I have interviewed all potential participants, I will call them and

tell them whether they were accepted or rejected. In Appendices 13 and 14 see

acceptance and rejection scripts. I will make a reminder call to participants five days

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prior to the study. Participants will be involved in the study by participating one day

from 10 am to 5pm. The activities of the day will consist of: theater warm up and

icebreaker exercises, altar building, line repetitions role-play, creating a diagram of

messages on the legacy of the Holocaust, Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama form,

reading of the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, writing activity to personalize

the poem, drawing of the empowered self and participation in the “Council of

Powerful Beings.” For expressive experience participants at different points of the

day will journal as well as share with the group their reactions and how they are

affected. For integration experience participants will share with the group towards the

end of the day in what ways they feel proud of their participation as well others’

participation. See Appendix 15 for a detailed script on what I will say to participants

on the day of the study at each phase from the beginning to end of the day. After data

collection is finished participants will be contacted through mail with the Summary of

Learnings and a thank you letter.

3. Participants will sign the consent form the day of the study prior to starting with data

collection. In Appendix 15 see script I will use at the beginning of the study day

where I instruct participants to sign the consent form and give them space to answer

any questions. The place where they will sing the consent form will be at the location

where we will conduct the study. One possibility is the Living Arts Center.

4. Risks for participants in this study may include the experience of various affects that

can be uncomfortable or psychologically painful. As revealed in the literature, some

of the experiences that this study might evoke are guilt, shame, anger, grief, fear,

depression and a sense of immobility. Exploring this topic can trigger feelings of

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depression, anxiety, rage, fear and hatred towards themselves or others which

participants may need to process and integrate after the day of the study.

5. Participants will be warned of possible risks during the initial phone conversation as

well as at the screening interview and acceptance phone call. I will tell them that

depending on what gets triggered for them, they might experience uncomfortable and

painful feelings. At the end of the day of the study I will tell participants that if they

need support to process and integrate experience that came up related to the research

they can ask me and I can refer them to a therapist. At the screening interview as well

as on the day of the study participants will be informed on what to expect for each

meeting. I see each and every contact that I have with participants as an opportunity

to establish rapport with them. I plan to create a safe enough container in the group by

having them interact with each other in various ways that support risk taking,

vulnerability, empathy and group cohesion. Interacting at first through play, as well

as sharing deep personal stories can open participants to deeper sharing, empathy and

trust. I will track my reactions through the course of the study by utilizing a consistent

practice of journaling. I will also process reactions with my co-researchers and other

key people that are supporting me in this process such as my therapist and cohort

classmates. Other procedures I will be doing to minimize risk potential is on the day

of the study to as I introduce the activities to participants I will tell them that

emotions and feelings might come up, that it is important they notice them, express

them when they are asked to express them, and also ask for help if they need it.

6. Benefit to participants include the possibility that they become more aware of their

identification with survivor guilt and internalized oppression. Working with certain

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affects and bringing the voice of the Friend might help them feel empowered and thus

might further their capacities. It is possible that because they are working with others

on this issue they might feel less guilty around trying to liberate from survivor guilt.

They could help each other support each other in claiming their power and give each

other permission to disidentify from survivor guilt. This study can benefit Jewish

people that are interested in working with issues around the legacy of the Holocaust

as well as Jewish people wanting to work with survivor guilt. In addition to benefiting

Jews it can also benefit other communities that have experienced massive trauma and

genocide. The Learnings can be a springboard to comparing and contrasting how

survivor guilt and internalized oppression plays out in other communities such as the

Native American and the African American communities. The study can benefit the

psychological community as it sheds light on an issue that is common but not

discussed much in relationship to intergenerational transmission of trauma and

internalized oppression.

7. Learnings will be shared with participants in way that respects confidentiality. I will

mail a copy of the Summary of Learnings as well as a thank you letter to each

participant. The Summary of Learnings will include key moments and

interpretations.

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APPENDIX 2

CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE

Evoking Experience

• Being asked to participate and participating in the warm-up exercises: “name game,” “lightening round,” “sound ball,” “passing and imaginary object,” “crossing the line,” “role-playing.” • Being asked to participate in the Altar Building. • Participating in the activity “role playing through line repetition.” • Introducing the diagram of messages around the Holocaust and giving instructions on activity. • Introducing Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama Form. • Reading of the poem “The Journey.” • Being asked to draw the last line of the poem. • Being invited to participate in the closing activity: “Sending a message to Ancestors and Future generations.”

Expressing Experience

• Participating in the warm-up exercises. • Sharing their stories while building the altar. • Journaling after each line repetition. • Sharing with the group after line repetitions. • Writing on the diagram the messages around the Holocaust. • Participating in the Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama form. • In a circle participants share with the group how they were affected by the Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama form. • Adding their own lines to the poem “The Journey.” • Drawing the last line of the poem. • Sharing their poems and drawings with the group. • Participating in the “Sending a message to Ancestors and Future generations.” • Closing appreciation circle. • Filling out questionnaire a the end of the day.

Interpreting Experience

• On the day of the study participants journal about their most powerful moment of the day and the meaning they make of that moment.

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Integrating Experience

• Participants share with the group what they are proud of about their participation as well as the groups’ participation. • Participants form semi-circle around the altar, they take their object by sharing what they are taking away with them from the day, blow their candle and taking it with them. • Researcher shares the written Summary of Leanings with participants via mail.

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APPENDIX 3

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

Day of the Study

Morning Session (9:00 – 1:00)

NOTE: a video camera will be used to tape all activities.

I. Informed Consent and Orientation (9:00 – 9:20)

1. Greet each participant and show them to their seat (5 minutes)

2. Explain general requirements for participation, provide each participant Informed Consent form and obtain their signature (10 minutes)

3. Review guidelines on participation and confidentiality

a. Participation at all times is voluntary

b. Researcher will keep all identities confidential and participants are asked to do the same

4. Respond to any questions participants might have

A. Orientation (5 minutes)

1. Researcher provides general information

a. Space (bathrooms, exit locations, etc.)

b. Schedule (breaks, ending time, etc.)

c. General overview of procedures involved during the meeting

II. Meditation: silence and guidance around breathing and grounding (3 minutes)

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III. Introductions (9:25 – 10:25)

A. Warm Up Exercises: (10 minutes) We stand up and create a circle. Researcher guides the group through the following exercises:

• Name Game: Participants are asked to one by one share their name and with a gesture and a sound express how they are feeling. Each time a person shares, the rest of the participants (including me and co- researchers) mirror back the name and gesture that they shared. Everyone takes a turn. • Expressing Feelings: One by one participants share a feeling by saying the feeling and acting it. The person to the right needs to repeat what people to their left said. The last person needs to remember and repeat what everyone said.

B. Line Repetitions (25 minutes)

1. Everyone stands up and pairs up. One person takes a line I give them and the other takes the other line. They have to repeat the assigned line over and over again until I ask them to switch. I ask them to notice how they are affected. Then I ask them to find a new partner and give them a different set of lines. The set of lines are: “You hurt me – I am sorry,” “I have to go – Please stay,” “Yes – Yes,” “I am so happy – And what about me?” For the last set of lines I ask them to develop it into a scene. (10)

2. After the first role play I give participants a handout for them to journal on. After each role-play, I ask participants to take a few minutes to journal about their reactions to participating in both roles. Once they write their last journal entry I invite participants to share with the group their reactions and how they are affected. (15 minutes)

IV. Evoking-Expressing Sequence (10:35 – 12:35)

A. Altar building: (50 minutes) Each person has five minutes to share their object and how this object or image relates to their story around the legacy and impact of the Holocaust. One by one they place the object on the altar next to a candle that they light.

B. Break (10 minutes)

C. Diagram of messages on the legacy of the Holocaust. Participants identify people and groups of people and what their messages are by creating a diagram. (20 minutes)

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D. Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama Form. Choose one participant to bring their diagram to life and engage in the form. (45 minutes)

E. Group circles and I open the circle for everyone to share how they were affected. (15 minutes)

F. Silent and guided meditation. I guide the group in a brief relaxation meditation. (3 minutes)

V. Lunch Break (one hour 12:35-1:35pm)

Afternoon session: (1:35 – 5:00pm)

VI. Continuation of Evoking-Expressing Sequence (1:35 – 4:00)

A. Reading of the poem “The Journey.” (5 minutes)

B. Writing activity. I give them the handout with the poem broken down into lines. There is space between the lines for them to write on. I explain that I will read each line and after each line I will give them less than a minute to write from stream of consciousness. We will go through the whole poem. Eleven sections at about 30 seconds per session. (6 minutes)

C. Artmaking. Once they are done I give them paper and a box of crayons and a box of oil pastels. I ask them to draw the person that represents the voice they recognize as their own and says: “the only life I can save is my own.” They draw. (15 minutes)

D. Participants share their poem and drawing with the group. (30 minutes)

E. “Sending a message to Ancestors and Future generations.”– Group goes to the altar. One by one participants address the object or image they brought. They speak to this image, who represent the ancestors, from the voice of the Friend. Then they speak to the future generation also from the voice of the Friend. (50 minutes)

VII. Integrating Experience (4:00 – 5:00)

A. Journaling. Answer the following questions: what are you taking with you from the work you did today? What was one of the more powerful moments of the day, and what meaning do you make of that. (10 minutes)

B. Closing phase: researcher asks for one minute of silence and while participants are in silence she asks participants to notice how hard they have worked. Researcher asks them to notice what they feel proud in regards to their participation as well as

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the groups’ participation. Then she asks participants to briefly share with the group. (20 minutes)

G. We go back to the altar and form a semi-circle around it. One by one participants they take their object by saying what they are taking away with them from the day, blow their candle and take it with them. (20 minutes)

H. I thank them, remind them that if they need more help with processing the day I can refer them to therapists and remind them to do self-care this coming week. (3 minutes)

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APPENDIX 4

CONSENT FORM

To the Participants in this Research:

You are invited to participate in a study on the legacy of the Holocaust. The study’s purpose is to better understand how the experiences of survivors of the Holocaust are passed down through the generations.

Participation will involve role-playing, improvisational methods, group discussion, journaling and artmaking. This will take place at the “Center for the Living Arts” and will involve one day long meeting. The meeting will last for a duration of seven hours and will be videotaped which will later be transcribed. The meeting date is on ().

For the protection of your privacy, all tapes and transcripts will be kept confidential and your identity will be protected. The information will be kept in a locked file under the researcher’s control. Only a professional transcriber will have access to these files and tapes temporarily. In the reporting of information in published material, any information that might indentify you will be altered to ensure your anonymity.

This study is of a research nature and may offer no direct benefit to you. The published findings, however, may be useful to Jews and other populations that have experienced historical trauma. This study is designed to minimize potential risks to you. However, some of the procedures such as role-playing, working with issues around the legacy, working with drama, poetry and art may touch sensitive areas for some people. You might experience psychological distress or discomfort such as anxiety, grief, fear and anger. The study might exacerbate symptoms such as depression, anxiety and helplessness. If at any time you develop any concern or questions, I will make every effort to discuss these with you. I, the researcher, cannot provide psychotherapy, but at your request or using my personal judgment, will facilitate referrals to an appropriate mental health professional, of such a need should arise.

If you decide to participate in this research, your participation is voluntary and you may withdraw your consent and discontinue your participation at any time and for any reason during the study. If during the study you need emotional support you will let the researcher know. The researcher or co-researchers will assist you in the moment.

If you have any questions or concerns, you may call me at (xxx) xxx-xxxx, Monday through Friday from 10 am to 8 pm or you may contact the Dissertation Director at Meridian University, 47 Sixth Street, Petaluma, CA, 94952, telephone: (707) 765-1836.

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Meridian University and the researchers assume no responsibility for any psychological or physical injury resulting from this research.

I, ______, consent to participate in the study of the legacy of the Holocaust. I have had this study explained to me by Nicola Wagenberg. Any questions of mine about this research have been answered, and I have received a copy of this consent form. My participation in this study is entirely voluntary.

______Participant’s Signature Date

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APPENDIX 5

FLYER

EXPLORING THE LEGACY OF THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST

Were your grandparents survivors of the Jewish Holocaust era?

Are you interested in exploring the impact this legacy has had on you?

Would you like to explore this with others in a group setting?

Are you interested in participating in a research study on this Jewish experience?

My name is Nícola Wagenberg and I am a doctoral candidate in Psychology from Meridian University. I am conducting research that is related to the psychological effects of the legacy of the Holocaust on third generation descendants of Jewish survivors.

The research will involve a one day group meeting. It will take place in the East Bay on either November 15 or 22, 2009 (DTBD). Previous to that there will be a half an hour screening interview. In order to participate you must have one year of individual or group therapy experience and you must be third generation descendant of Jewish survivors*. Drama therapy, expressive arts and improvisational techniques will be used.

If you are interested in participating in the study, know someone who might be interested, or would like more information please contact Nícola Wagenberg at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email her at: [email protected]

*Third generation means a grandparent or their close family members survived. Survivors are defined as: Grandparents or their close family members that were in concentration camps and survived, Grandparents or their close family members that were in hiding in Europe during the Nazi regime; Grandparents or their close family members that fled to other countries before or during the war; if one or more grandparents or their close family members perished in Europe during the Nazi Regime

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APPENDIX 6

FIRST CONTACT BY PHONE WITH POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS SCRIPT

Thank you for your email or phone call. And thank you for your interest in participating in this study.

How did you hear or learn about this study that I am conducting? Can you tell me more about yourself and why you might be interested in participating? Can you tell me a little bit about your background and connection to the legacy of the Holocaust and also your experience with therapy?

If given the information they just gave me, I can tell that the person does not meet the criteria for the study, I would tell them right away and tell them why they do not qualify as follows:

I’m sorry. I am looking for people who have a different connection to the Holocaust.

Or:

I’m sorry. I am looking for people who have more experience with therapy.

If it sounds like this person can be a candidate I will continue with the information below:

In this phone call I’d like to tell you more about the study and what it will entail. You can also ask me any questions. If after hearing this information you are interested in participating, the next step will be for us to meet in person for about 30 minutes.

I am conducting a research study for my dissertation in Psychology. My topic is related to the experience of people whose grandparents survived the Holocaust in one way or another. I want to know more about your experience with the legacy of the Holocaust and how the experiences of grandparents are passed on to the following generations. I don’t want to tell you too much because I want to keep things fresh for the research.

The study will be done in a group setting. There will be eight to 10 participants in the study with whom you will be interacting and sharing personal stories and feelings. My goal is to have the same number of men and women in the group.

Participation will involve role-playing, improvisational methods, group discussion, journaling and art making. Once the dissertation is complete, I will share the learning of the study with you.

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Other important information about the study is that on the day of the study there will be a person video taping the whole session. I am video taping to facilitate the process that comes after the research study which involves interpreting what happened on that day. The video tapes are confidential. My co-researchers (who will be present on the day of the study) and I and possibly a transcriber are the only people that will have access to them. They will remain locked in a file cabinet.

Do you have any questions?

Are you still interested in participating?

If you are still interested, the next step is for us to meet in person for about 30 minutes. That meeting will give me time to get to know you a little bit more, learn more about your interest in the study, your family background and your experience with therapy. I am glad that you would like to meet. Let’s meet at the Center for Healing Arts. The address is . Are you available on (date and time)? Also, would you mind providing me with you phone number and email address?

I gather any additional contact information I need, their phone numbers and emails.

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APPENDIX 7

SCREENING INTERVIEW SCRIPT

Beginning of the Meeting Thank you for meeting with me and for your interest in the study. I want to tell you again what the nature of this study is:

My topic is related to the experience of people whose grandparents survived the Holocaust in one way or another. I am interested in exploring issues around the legacy of the Holocaust. I want to know more about how the experiences of grandparents is passed on to the following generations. I don’t want to tell you too much because I want to keep things fresh for the research. I want to get your fresh input on the day of the actual research.

Other important information about the study is that on the day of the study there will be a person videotaping the whole session. I am videotaping the day to facilitate the process that comes after the research study which involves interpreting what happened on that day. I want to assure you that the videotapes will be kept confidential. My co-researchers (who will be present on the day of the study) and I and possibly a transcriber are the only people that will have access to them. They will remain locked in a file cabinet.

As I mentioned when we spoke on the phone, today I am going to ask you some questions related to your family history as well as your experience with psychotherapy. I am going to take notes of what you say. I want to reiterate that your name is confidential. If you end up participating in the study I might use some of this information, but again, I will not use your name at any point during the process. If, for one reason or another, you do not participate in the study this information as well as your name will remain confidential. All of the documentation that I gather is going to be locked up in a file. I will be the only person who has access to this file.

Do you have any questions before we start with the interview?

Interview Questions: 1. Tell me why you are interested in participating in this study.

2. Talk about your family history.

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3. Who of your ancestors survived?

4. Where were your grandparents from, how did you or your family get to this country?

5. What is your relationship to Judaism right now?

6. On the day of the study, participants will be engaged in various exercises and activities that involve improvisation, role-playing, and activities that might evoke different feelings, some of them might be uncomfortable. Tell me about your experience in therapy? How long did you participate in therapy? What kind?

7. How do you feel working in a group?

8. How do you feel about participating in role-plays?

9. How do you feel about making art?

10. Anything else that you want to tell me?

Thank you for meeting with me. I will get back to you within next ten days; I will phone you to let you know about whether you might be part of the study and what the next steps will be.

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APPENDIX 8

ACCEPTANCE PHONE CALL SCRIPT

I am calling to thank you for meeting with me last week and sharing parts of your story. I would very much appreciate your participation in the study. Are you still interested and do you want to participate?

(If the person says yes) Great. In our last meeting you said that possible dates for you to meet are such and such. Is this still true? Right now, it looks like the study will happen either this day or that day. Which ones can you commit to?

I will let you know the final date in the next five day. I will send you an email and will call you as well.

The meeting will take place in such and such place.

There will be a one hour lunch break. The plan for lunch is:

I am asking each participant to bring an object, an image or something that you can share with the group that relates to your connection to the legacy of the Holocaust.

I am going to send you an email with this information as well. You will receive it within the next five days.

Do you have any questions?

Please contact me anytime if you have any questions or comments. You have my contact information right? I can give it to you again. This is my cell phone number and email.

I look forward to seeing you again.

Thank you for your participation.

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APPENDIX 9

REJECTION PHONE CALL SCRIPT

I am calling to thank you for meeting with me last week and sharing parts of your story. I appreciate your time and your interest in participating in this study. Your story and personal experience with this legacy is very meaningful. I am honored that you shared parts of this story with me.

I want to let you know that unfortunately because of various reasons you do not qualify for this study. I can tell that person the reasons: (can be because their connection to the legacy is not exactly what I am looking for, can be because they do not have enough therapy experience, or because I already have too many women or too many men.)

I wish you good luck in your process and integration of this legacy. I hope you continue exploring it and working with it.

Thank you and goodbye.

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APPENDIX 10

RESEARCH MEETING DAY SCRIPT

Welcoming and Informed Consent signature: I greet each participant and show them to their seat. Once everyone is in their seat, I welcome them, thank them for their participation and introduce the co-researchers. I tell them that before I give them an orientation the first thing I want them to do is to read the Informed Consent and sing it. If they have questions right away they can ask them, otherwise I ask them to save them for after everyone signs and we review the guidelines on participation and confidentiality and they can ask any questions they have.

Review guidelines on participation and confidentiality I tell them that participation at all times is voluntary. That researcher will keep all identities confidential and participants are asked to do the same. I ask if they have questions and respond to any questions participants might have.

Orientation I provide information about Space (bathrooms, exit locations, etc.), Schedule (breaks, ending time, etc.) and give a general overview of procedures involved during the meeting. I tell them that I will be guiding them through different activities. These activities might evoke different feelings and they could be triggering. If they need assistance please let us know in the moment and one of us will provide support.

Meditation We’ll start with a three minute guided meditation. Please close your eyes and in silence notice your breathing. Notice as you breath in and out. Notice your belly expanding and contracting as you breath in and out. Feel your feet on the ground. Relax your arms. Notice how you are feeling. Whatever arises is acceptable. Do not judge it. Just notice it I give them some silent time. And towards the end I tell them to come back to their breath, take three breaths and open their eyes.

Introductions - Theater Warm Up and Icebreaker Exercises

I say to them now we are going to engage in some warm up improvisational exercises to get to know each other and get to use our bodies and voice through movement and play. Please stand up and we’ll create a circle.

The first game we are going to play is a name game. One by one you are going to say your name with some gesture and any tonality you want to add to it. Everyone listens and then mirrors back what the person did. I will give you an example. I say: Nicola with a gesture. Now you all repeat what I just did and I observe. Good. Now we’ll go around. I

243 look to the person on my right and tell them to do it. We do this until everyone is done. I say: good. Very good.

Now we are going to play one more game: I am going to start. I say and at the same time act out a feeling. For example: anger. Now everyone mirrors what I just did. Now the person to my right will do their own. Say a feeling and show us how it looks for you. Express it. Good. Now everyone repeats mine and theirs. Great. We do this until the last person goes. We repeat everyones.

Role Playing through Line Repetitions When we come back from the break I ask everyone to get into pairs standing up. I tell them to choose who is going to be “A” and who is going to be “B.” I tell them that I am going to give a line to all As and a line to all Bs. They have to interact with each other by only saying that line. I will give them about a minute and then I will tell them to switch lines. I tell them to notice how they are affected. I show them an example with one of the co-researchers. After I tell them, okay, the first line is As say: “You hurt me” and Bs say: “I am sorry,” once they switched I I hand them paper and pens and tell them to sit where they are and journal about their reactions to participating in both roles. I give them a couple of minutes to journal. Then I ask them to find a new partner, choose who is A and who is B and I give them the next set of lines: “I have to go – Please stay,” once they switched I ask them to journal again. Then I ask them to find a different partner and I give them the lines: “Yes – Yes,” I ask them to journal and then find a new partner. The last set of lines is: “I am so happy – And what about me?” once they switched I ask them to continue with this set of lines and develop it into a scene. They can add more content. I give them a few more minutes and ask them to stop. I ask them to journal their reactions. Then I tell the group to sit back in their chairs. In a circle I open the space for people to share out loud how they were affected by the exercise. We take the paper where they journaled.

Once we are done I say great. Good job everyone. Now we are going to go back to our sits and please take out the object or image that you brought for the altar.

Altar building I tell the group that we are going to make an altar on the table. On the table there is a candle for each person. As you share your story and put your object on the altar, please take a candle and light it. You can put it next to your object or wherever you want. Each person has five minutes to share your object or image and tell us how it relates to your story around the legacy of the Holocaust. I will let you know a little bit before the three minutes is over so you can finish at three minutes. I will look at you and give you a signal. Whoever is ready to start please start. We do this until everyone shares.

Ten minute break Now we are going to have a ten minute break go to the bathroom, you can eat or drink something.

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Diagram of messages on the legacy of the Holocaust. I give them a piece of paper and ask them to answer the question: what told and untold messages do you receive about the legacy of the Holocaust? I ask them to write the messages and where they come from, if they can identify.

Imaginal Dialogue/Psychodrama Form. Once they completed the diagram we move into a form that includes techniques from imaginal dialogue and psychodrama. I ask the group who would like to volunteer to bring the diagram to life. I will explain that the volunteer who will become the protagonist will select participants to play the different people or groups and will be giving them the lines they wrote in the diagram. The protagonist will eventually engage in a back and forward dialogue with the person or group that has most charged to them. I will tell them that I will be directing and coaching letting them know what they need to do in terms of the mechanics of the form as well as supporting them with the content. The co-researchers and myself will be intervening when needed by assisting with lines and expression of feelings. Whenever we are intervening by giving lines to the protagonist the protagonist should decide if it fits with what they are feeling and thinking. If it does not fit they should say what is true for them. I will remind them of this once we are in the form. If more then one person volunteers to do the form, I will choose who will be the protagonist. Once it is decided who the protagonist is, we will create a human replica of the diagram. I ask the protagonist to stand up and choose a double that will represent them. I emphasize that choosing who will play the different roles comes from a felt sense or a gut feeling. The protagonist needs to ask the participant if they are willing to play the role. The participants can decline. If this happens they need to ask someone else. The role of their double is to switch back and forward with the protagonist, helping them by repeating lines, being aware of how they are affected and expressing it when appropriate. I ask the protagonist to place the double in the space where the form will take place (everyone will be standing up), somewhere in the middle of the space. I will then ask the protagonist to one by one choose the other roles that represent each of the people or groups of people they included in their diagram. Since I am the director, everyone can participate in a role except me. The protagonist chooses their first role. I ask them to place the role in the space in relation to themselves (who at the moment is their double) according to how loud they hear those voices. i.e. if the message from this role is very loud and intense they might place that person really close to their double. Once they place the person they give them a gesture, maybe a movement (i.e. could be pointing their finger at them) and the line they are saying as they hear it, and with any movement if necessary. I ask the role to repeat the line, gesture and movement exactly as to how the protagonist did it. I then ask the protagonist if it was said correctly. Not until the protagonist hears it exactly the way they want it do we move on to the next role. Once we move to the next role I give the same instructions. We do this until all the roles are represented and they each have their line and expression. I then ask the protagonist to switch with their double. They are now inside the picture. The double always stays right next to the protagonist. I then ask the roles to one by one deliver their lines. Then I ask all of the roles to say their lines at the same time. Once they do this a couple of times I ask

245 the protagonist to say how they are affected. Once they express it with words and also how they feel it in their body we decide which voice has the most charge for them. Once this is decided I direct them into an imaginal/psychodramatic dialogue. The protagonist will engage in a dialogue with this role by first speaking back to them. I ask their double to pay close attention because they will be repeating the lines. Once the protagonist expressed from their position I ask them to move into the position of the other person and respond to their double from that position. I ask the person that is playing that role to listen carefully as they will have to repeat the lines once the protagonist switches back to being themselves. The protagonist speaks from this position and their double responds with the lines that the protagonist first said in their position. I then ask the protagonist to go back to their place and ask the person playing the role to repeat the line they said. This form of having the protagonist speak from both positions happens for some time as the conversation gets deeper. I encourage both positions to speak from a vulnerable place by asking them to drop into their feelings, perhaps speaking from a child place. I will assist them by feeding them lines or feelings. I will tell the protagonist that if those lines are not correct that they should say what is true to them. I will help by identifying gatekeeping voices, teasing them out with the help of the friend voice. The form ends by having the protagonist speak to their double from the voice of the friend. I ask the double to play the protagonist and the protagonist to play the voice of the friend. I ask them to deliver the lines to their double and then ask the double to switch and repeat those lines so the protagonist hears and feels what the voice of the friend says. The last instructions I give them is to address each of the roles by giving each a last closing statement from the friend voice. The roles listen. To close the form I ask the protagonist to de-role each of the roles by saying to them, i.e. you are not my father - you are Allan, and thank them for their participation.

Group expresses how they were affected by the Imaginal Dialogue I tell the group that we will debrief and process what happened and ask them to form a circle sitting in their chairs. I give instructions for the processing session: everyone is encouraged to share. The people that played roles should share from the role as well as from their own personal lives. For example, in the roles how they felt or were affected and from their personal lives how this form and the issues that came up relates to their own lives. They can say how they were affected but I emphasize that people should not be giving advice, should not be asking questions, or giving interpretations. I will explain that this space is an opportunity for people to share how they were affected and how what came up relates to their own story. Usually in psychodramas because the protagonist is in an altered state they give the protagonist a break from sharing. I will say to the protagonist that they do not need to share but if they want or feel they need to say something they are welcomed to do so. Once we are done with the sharing I will guide the group in a short guided meditation to ground themselves before breaking for lunch. At that point we collect the diagrams everyone drew.

One-hour lunch break People will eat the lunch their brought or go out to get lunch.

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Presentation and working with the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver After lunch break we move into the next evocative experience: I deliver by memory and with some dramatization the poem “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. After I deliver it I give them a handout that has each line of the poem broken down with spaces for them to right in between the lines. After I read each line I give them about 30 seconds to write from stream of consciousness. The goal is for them to fill in the poem thus adding to it and creating their own. Once they are done with all of the lines I give them paper and a box of crayons and a box of oil pastels and tell them: express how you are affected by creating an image with these materials, allow whatever wants to come up to come up.

Sharing the Poem and Drawing I ask the group to come back to the circle and share their poem and drawing with the group. First read your poem and then show us your image. You can talk briefly about your image if you want to. But you don’t have to.

Messages to Ancestor and Future Generations Going back to the altar, participants are invited to address the ancestors and the future generations by sending a message to each of them. One by one participants stand up and address the ancestors by facing the altar, then they turn around and facing the semi-circle they address the future generation.

Integrating Experience – Journaling and Appreciations Good, let’s go back to all sitting in a circle.

We are moving to the last phase of the day: we are going to close the day with two activities.

The first one is journaling. I am giving you a piece of paper now for you to answer the questions: what are you taking with you from the work you did today? What was one of the more powerful moments of the day, and what meaning do you make of that. We collect all of the handouts: the poem, the drawing and the journal questions.

Great now, everyone please close your eyes. Take a few breaths while we are in silence. Now I want you to notice how hard you have worked, individually and as a group. Notice what you feel proud about in regards to your participation as well as the groups’ participation. Now open your eyes, and we’ll go around sharing with the group your thoughts and appreciation for the hard work you have done today. Tell us what you are proud about your work as well as the groups’ participation.

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Altar Break Down and Closing For the last activity I would like everyone to face the altar. One by one goes to the altar and as you take your object, blow your candle and take the candle with you, please say what you are taking away with you from the day.

Thank you and Goodbye I thank them, remind them that if they need more help with processing the day I can refer them to therapists and remind them to do self-care this coming week.

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APPENDIX 11

HANDOUT – REACTIONS TO “LINE REPETITIONS”

Please write your reactions to participating in the role-play. What was it like to play each of the lines?

Role Play #1:

Role Play #2:

Role Play #3:

Role Play #4:

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APPENDIX 12

THE JOURNEY One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations – though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save.

—Mary Oliver

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APPENDIX 13

END OF THE DAY QUESTIONNAIRE

Your Name:

Please answer the following questions. Please be as specific as possible:

How are you affected right now? What are you feeling?

In reviewing the day, where you surprised by anything that you noticed?

Did anything unexpected happen?

How did you feel at the beginning of the day and how do you feel at the end?

In reviewing today’s experiences, what is one of the more powerful moments of the day, and what meaning do you make of that?

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APPENDIX 14

POST-RESEARCH STUDY QUESTIONNAIRE

Your Name:

As you integrate the experience we shared; what thoughts, reflections, feelings or meanings are you having/making?

Can you please share one to three key moments that stand out for you the strongest from our day together. Can be something someone said, an insight you had, something that happened, an image that came to you, a feeling you had, something about your participation, etc.

What meaning do you make of each key moment you shared above?

And last, if you could send a message or say something to the third generation descendants of survivors of the Holocaust, what would you say to them?

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APPENDIX 15

THANK YOU LETTER TO PARTICIPANTS

Dear Participant,

Thank you very much for participating on the study. Your participation was essential in allowing me to study issues related to the legacy of the Holocaust.

As I discussed with you, enclosed please find the Summary of Learnings that I compiled for you and other participants. I hope you find these Learnings somewhat beneficial to you and perhaps other people that you know.

I am deeply appreciative of your participation and sharing of your story.

Wishing you the best in your process,

Nicola Wagenberg

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APPENDIX 16

SUMMARY OF DATA

Selected Responses to Questions From the Screening Interview Meeting

Do you notice any feelings that come up as you tell me your family’s Holocaust story?

Esha: I miss my Oma, far enough under the surface in my daily life; I am not in touch with the emotions about them. Grew up with a lot of messages, living in liberal California, I don’t have the right to feel oppressed, or that my family suffered anything that is beyond what people of color have to face, it’s put a layer in between the feelings, I have done more work around white privilege.

Sarah: Yes, totally, I have all this stuff that comes up around: that is awful, is crazy it happened, certain amount of wanting to say that is fine it was a long time ago. In the left the experience of the Holocaust and Jews is denied in a certain way, I grew up with so much privilege so far behind that, that I also feel like I should not feel bad, permission to grieve and mourn that I should feel I am fine. But that was awful, that’s my relatives, my history what I inherited, I realize I have a lot of inability to communicate with my grandparents.

Why are you interested in this study?

Esha: (A)n opportunity to explore something I had not allowed myself to explore. I don’t have any friends that were with grandparents, I don’t have that many Jewish friends, exciting to connect with similar people. I grew up with mom’s side of the family. They are not Jewish, family was more stable, more tumultuous in my dad’s side of the family, we didn’t establish strong bonds. Spiritually I am more connected to my dad’s side of the family.

Isabella: I have had spiritual moments as a little kid when I actually saw an image of my dad’s mother, I had similar feelings, Sophie’s Choice, oh my gosh, one of those moments, felt like I was connected to it, went beyond, felt the connection, it was profound sense of grieving and loss, disempowerment, it was being acted, there are these underlying pieces going to the Holocaust museum, I get from where, it is in my body, in a deep place. Grieving, a sense of there is something missing, you don’t understand any human being, and we have something to offer the world, sense of not being seen.

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Guilt is huge in my family, a big word, maybe that is part of me moving me to do this work as well, I do feel, in that scene she has to make the choice her own life or someone else’s life, or her child, make a choice between her child being taken away when she’s going through a concentration camp, whenever she makes the choice and child gets taken away, very very sad, because it is almost like when people use the word choice, if I were in the shoes, making the choice, her child or herself, I can’t imagine, the word guilt, is like anyone in those situation besides people who were empowered and survived, can’t imagine the guilt that you carry with you and indirectly pass on to your generation, I just understand the word Jewish guilt that I didn’t before, there is a lot of it in my mom. I got the most from her, I understand more of where the guilt comes from, some of the traumas that I assume where passed on even just from the pogroms, I have a combination of a sense of helplessness of missing knowledge but a heaviness too. Feels like I want to understand it more and maybe transform the guilt into something that is empowering because right now it is heavy stuff, my mom is very passionate about finding about ancestors. Hopefully be able to help her gain more access to things that will empower her, she is a disempowered person.

Sarah: I am interested for a few reasons: I don’t get enough chance to talk about this, messed up situation I went to see the movie UP, Pixar film, sweet, old couple, feel good children’s movie, really scary to me, scenarios where they were being chased, main characters, by evil scary dogs, unnecessary chasing, it brought up all these feelings, I flipped out, it raised all Holocaust feelings, people chasing you, I don’t watch scary movies, it triggers me so easily, there is this message that I should be over it, people deny the Holocaust, sometimes I say: am I crazy? I think is so important to talk about it, and work in groups. I have not talked too much with people about it.

Lillian: I never explored the experience of being a descendant of a Holocaust survivor with anyone outside of my family, never talked about it intentionally, to sit around and think what it means, and feel what it means…

Hanna: Hear people’s stories, see if I have any resonance with people, in terms of the work I am doing, find things in common with people, there is also being third generation, an honoring there, different from other people because it has had profound impact in my life.

Arya: I have mixed feelings about participating, I like the idea of contributing a data point, comes up that I should, I should do this, part of me that does not want to deal with it, does not want it to be a thing. I would like it to be such that my grandparents were survivors so what, that was the big thing…

Part of me is really intrigued about who I am and having permission to deal with things that are traumatic, handling traumatic things but not being with it, afraid of not wanting to go there because of the sadness and upsetness. If you go there you might die.

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How have the stories impacted you?

Esha: I empathize with people who have experienced war, violence, and prejudice, always as a kid, probably before going to Germany at 8 with my Oma. I am aware of injustices, think I would not be here if they would not have left. Studying the Holocaust in elementary school, remember reading the numbers of people, watching documentaries about it, awful imagery. Wonder if there is not a part of me that carries that, uh that is big, that I am here and privileged to be here, a part of me died with the people that died, disconnected from the group who are dead, sadness and grief.

What messages about the Holocaust have you received?

Sarah: Growing up in religious school there was a lot of always remember always remember, the constant, never forget you have to remember…

Hanna: Only in the last couple of years in graduate work have I realize the impact, when I was very young I went to therapy I would have panic attacks, my therapists would say maybe Holocaust but not talked about much, since I was 15 years old I had panic attacks that are debilitating and I can’t function, I have been in and out of therapy and medication and my sister has something very similar… I talked about it in a research capacity, but never around with people who are third generation besides my siblings.

Arya: From family, the horror and the pain, from the time I was a small child, in Hebrew school was pounded but it wasn’t something to talk about. It would make any of my grandparents cry, crying was not acceptable, sadness was not acceptable, yelling and being angry was comfortable, you didn’t ask some things that would make someone cry, if you got caught you are culpable if you ask my grandma about her favorite brother, she would tap into her pain, frighten everyone… big survival thing in the family: you should always be prepared, know better, we weren’t given Jewish first names, Hebrew names, so people don’t know, if it happens again we can hide. Brings up sadness.

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Data from Research Day

Selected Sharings from the Ancestral Ritual: Sharing the Family Holocaust Story

Hanna: This picture at the top is very beautiful. The top is in black and white and there is a boat with a big knife on it. There is blood dripping down, and it has the name Lodz which is where my father’s father was from in Poland. At the bottom, there are the faces of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather and a child. These are very sad faces. It’s a very horrifying picture. It was drawn with fine point pen. It hung in my dining room growing up. I would sit there on Shabbat staring at it. It’s very graphic with the blood. My grandfather grew up in Lodz, then moved to Germany, and was a German citizen. He had a wife and two young sons. They all went to Auschwitz. He saw his wife and two sons killed in front of him; he was given special privileges because he was big and strong and he could work and spoke German. When the war ended and he was an 80-pound survivor, his brother was in the States so he came here. He met his wife, had my uncle, and then they had my father. My grandfather was a very quiet man but would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. My father is also calm most of the time but he has these very horrific angry outbursts. But it was hard. He knew that one of my grandfather son’s name was Simon but didn’t know the other. His father didn’t talk about them. When my mother was seven months pregnant with my older brother who is two years older than me, my grandfather hanged himself and my grandmother found him and she went crazy. She was already kind of crazy, so she went completely senile. It was this huge family secret. I found out when I was 14 years old, when I saw his death certificate. They had hidden it from everybody because he was a Holocaust survivor. The rabbis were hush, hush about (it) because they thought he was in Auschwitz, he killed himself so he wasn’t in his right mind. So the Holocaust was always very present in my life. My father is obsessed with it. He has a library with books about it. He talked about it consistently. I was eight when I saw “Europa Europa”… This picture that my dad drew symbolizes the presence of the Holocaust in my life, very vividly, and I am sad that had to happen, and I am happy that it lives still, through me and the work that I am doing in graduate school. So metaphorically, I put this picture on the table.

Esha: Oma is my connection to the Holocaust. She passed away in 2007. Oma moved to New York in 1928 with her two sisters and parents. Her father had been placed in a concentration camp. These sort of wishy-washy stories that I have been told say that my great grandmother was very smart and quick and figure out a way to get him out and they all came to New York. This is sort of all I have except for the program I have here from her memorial services. I’ll pass these around. I think that is very symbolic to me because of the little I have inherited in terms of the stories and reality of all of it, and yet there is so much that I inherited I think (she laughs). Oma was 18 when they moved to the States, the way my family talks about my great Oma was that she was this fabulous open minded, go getter and breaking social norms. I think my Oma had a very healthy happy childhood, which is not very common, and then in her early adolescence she had to stop going to the school in Germany and then their business was taken away, and then obviously she was uprooted and had to start over at age 18. She didn’t finish high school

257 because of the war, if there are ifs, what if the war had not happened? I think she would have been a healthy person but she ended up marrying my opa. He had all sorts of trauma, and ended up sexually molesting both of my aunts and abusing my father. My Oma of course was in denial about the trauma from the Holocaust, having to redefine and restart her life over in a new country, didn’t talk about and didn’t process much this trauma and even then, so that is how my father and aunts were raised.

Arya: It’s hard to know where to start. I am the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. My grandfather survived Treblinka and found my grandmother in the woods where she was hiding, being helped by a Polish family that we are still in touch with. My mother’s mother had been married and had a child who was shot in the woods. I grew up with a lot. Being by far the first grandchild, there was a lot put on me: I was success, I was the family survivor. So I brought this picture; I have a lot of pictures because we started trying to create a history. I don’t like this one because everyone is solemn but it’s the only picture we have of my great- grandparents. I have the list my mother made of who all these people are and almost none of them survived. The part that gets me is this: There is the row of kids on the front and one survived and that is really hard to see. And then I grabbed a couple of pictures: One has my mother’s parents in (it.) They are at the DP camps. They are probably in their early twenties. They look happy. How can one go on and be happy when you lost all your family? Maybe it’s the sense of, you did it somehow. Later, they don’t look this happy… My grandma had depression and PTSD and could not talk about it, feels so big overshadowing, hard to know where to start and express it to people, even here. For my wedding I wanted to elope. I wanted to be in a beach in Hawaii, in a sundress. I had to throw a huge wedding. People ask: Why? Because I am descendant of Holocaust survivors, there is no other option. I had four grandparents when I was a child. The last one died after I got married. I treasure that I grew up with them. The legacy of anger and pain is very present. We were taught to not be sad. It’s a big thing in my family. Anger is great, extremely welcomed and acceptable. Yelling is how we talk. I realized a few years ago, I had a medical procedure. I didn’t know what was going to happen; was I going to have major surgery, and my mother, said, ”The most important thing is to not be sad because it is all going to be okay.” Oh, this is how you survive! There is no space for sadness. And this is where I had it. That’s been the most present part in thinking about this legacy.

Lillian: I didn’t think that there would be parts of who I am that are affected. Also, being in a room full of women makes me think of the roles women play in their families. I brought a photo of my safta and I from when I was already an adult. She is my connection to the Holocaust. She is my father’s mother. She was married to my grandfather before the war. They were Lithuanian and were physicians. A Polish family helped them survive. My grandfather died when I was born so she is the one I knew. I realize, too, that I don’t think I ever sat in a room full of people and talked about this legacy. I can remember this balance of it’s always very present but not spoken about. It’s something that is present, a weight. It’s integrated into this being. I think of my safta as very spunky, unconventional, had this spirit, and she did tell stories. She (was) comfortable, told the same 15 stories about the Holocaust. I can hear her telling them, but then there were other things she could not talk about. A lot of those stories were even

258 funny. When they were in a work camp and one of the guards was sort of nicer, they would say, “For him I wish I nice death,” and she would laugh really hard. And then, of course, she would tell these terrible stories. She had so much humor and life and vivacity, but also the not being sad, being the key to survival. But then she would get sad and I’d say, “You want to talk?” Then she would say, “Who wants to hear those old stories? Let’s talk about something else, listen to music or read.” I didn’t realize how much, how meaningful it is to honor these people and these stories in an intentional way, feels really important.

Isabella: My object is actually not able to sit on the table, it’s a long dark blue robe with gold buttons. This was my mother’s mother. She great up in New York, was very creative, was an actress wrote for soap operas on the radio, my grandfather stopped her from doing that. This garment was important to me growing up. I saw it in the closet, I would imagine wearing it, when she came close to dying I said to my mother I wanted it. I think her creativity comes through me. This represents my relationship to my family’s legacy and the holocaust because it wasn’t talked about. My mother’s side of the family were the only Jews who completely cut themselves off from being Jewish, my mom was raised with a Christmas tree, part of the symbolism for me in this mysterious garment is the unknown knowing that it has impacted me but not knowing exactly where it comes from because nobody talks about it. There are missing buttons which represent the missing pieces that hold the stories together and the family together. My grandmother was born here, went back to the Ukraine before WWII, visited her grandmother and cousins, she had stories of that, that part of the family was killed in the holocaust, my mom didn’t know that until she looked in the registry, grandmother didn’t talk about, big thing about cut off, disconnect, my grandparents had Jewish noses, all Jewish girls got nose jobs in New York, mother had a nose job, I have two nose rings on my nose. [I have] so much sadness relating to being Jewish. When I was interviewing my mom about this stuff, horrible trauma came up, remembered being tied up in neighbors, don’t remember what happened, so much sadness, vulnerability, she said: there is not point in remembering all this, live in the now, I am happy now, what is the point of going back. I am reclaiming the family story and heritage and putting it back together for me and future generations. Hold the pain and transform it through healing. My grandmother wore this robe to the academy awards with my grandfather, a way to express herself. He stopped her from acting, being an artist, etc.

Elana: I forgot to bring something. My grandparents are from Berlin; (they were) my mother’s parents. In 1939, they came here. My grandmother lost all her family. She found out through my mother who went to Auschwitz that the family was sent there. When they came here, they changed their name and at same time got a lot of support from German Jewish immigrants in New York. My mom went through a process of reclaiming Judaism about 12 years ago. She started a spiritual path, went on to bearing witness retreat to Auschwitz with the Zen Peace Order. I followed her footsteps. The interesting thing to me is that my grandma would tell stories. Just two months before she passed away, the day she went into the hospital, her book was published. Her memoir is mostly about the time of leaving Germany and what happened afterwards. She used to read me these stories so I feel connected to the stories. The thing I resonate the most right now with,

259 what people are saying is that she became an MFT and studied with German Jews who were immigrants in New York and was very radical, was sex therapist, and yet she never expressed emotion. It was the emotions that were too much for her. She was incredibly practical, and also very active, engaged in doing things, and being things, and yet, I never knew what was going on inside of her. I went to Auschwitz two years ago, and very deeply connected with her brother, who was 19 when he died there. And one of the things that I would have brought today is a ceramic bird that I brought back from Cracow that, for me, was a way to bring him home, and also my grandmother’s book. I had an emotional connection with him I did not have with her, just being there in Auschwitz, and yet, I look at all these pictures and I see my grandmother in all of them and I was definitely the light of her life. My mother was her only child and I was her only grandchild. She could not connect with my mom. There was too much trauma there. And yet, for me, she could see me as the light of the future. (Tears rolling down speaker’s cheeks) It’s taken me a while to appreciate the way she was able to show me her love. So that is kind of what I bring today. The earrings that I am wearing are diamonds and pearls she smuggled from Germany and had earrings made for me. So this is what I put on the altar. I want to say how grateful I am to be here in this group. I also feel like I am bringing the stories of the women that I am in a group with, of Jews and Palestinians and Germans, a woman’s group recognizing the suffering that goes (on) and continues.

Sarah: So I’ll start with my grandparents. My father’s parents are Holocaust survivors. My father was born in a DP camp and moved to New York when he was 4. My grandparents were from outside of Cracow. My grandfather, his parents, and sisters survived, but for most of the Holocaust my grandparents were on the run in work camps. When I was growing up, I started asking questions, and I grew up in religious school with the, “You can’t forget! You can’t let it happen again! Remember, remember!” fear I have of the denial of people’s history… I especially realize in my early 20s, I had this big fear Nazis were going to come any moment. Everything is never okay. What is going to happen next? I can’t be happy. Something is about to go really wrong. This feeling of, “You can’t trust, you got to be on the run.” But, at same time, I also grew up with a sense of social justice. I can’t let it happen again for Jews and others. (It’s) different than (my) grandparents. They would tell me, “Do for Jews first.” So I had a conflict. I understand where it comes from for them because of what they experienced, but is antithetical to my understanding of what I think we need to do to not let that happen again. I felt very alone with all of this until I talked to my cousin about this. I have this knowing that I am Jewish and continuing this legacy is really important to my parents and I feel the pressure. I feel I have a lot of sadness and pain from this experience but feel like I am not allowed to talk about it and share these stories. I am supposed to hold them in or say, “It’s okay because it happened a long time ago.” I feel like my partner can’t hold this experience. I feel my mom could not hold that for my dad, part of the challenge they had. I brought a picture of my grandparents and their siblings and a couple of cousins. This represents the ongoing legacy of those people who survived and how important family was for them and the joy. And this other (object) is an art piece that I made seven years ago. It has some of the symbols. The way that the stars are scratched out captures my constant emotional connection to the Holocaust and also my connection to social justice.

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Natalie: My dad’s side are the ones who experienced the Holocaust. My grandfather was from Turkey and my grandmother was from Greece. When she was about eight, her father had been taken to a concentration camp. She was 15 and she thought she could help him get back and that is how she was captured. My grandfather, he had stolen the torah from the temple and hidden in his house because he was afraid they were going to burn it. He didn’t tell me this story until he was 80. Six months before he died he sat me down for an hour. The guy would not talk to me for 10 minutes. We weren’t that close. We didn’t talk about deep things, but he thought I should know this story. They migrated to Venezuela where I was born. My grandmother was like my mother. She was the love of my life. This photo is of us at the beach with shades of purple; that was my favorite color. This other picture is a goofy picture of my grandfather. This other picture is when she was 15 years old when she was captured. I have another one where she was in a hospital bed in the Red Cross just when she got out of the camp. She was very thin. I don’t have that picture (here.) I was about eight or nine when I found out about the Holocaust. I said, “What is that on your arm?” Somehow she felt she could tell me the story. She told me the story and I cried. She told me so much. It felt (like) it was the time to tell me. Later, I started to ask her, “Why don’t you write a book and share?” and she said, “I would write a book if you come here and help me.” I felt torn, but I couldn’t do it and part of that is because I was discovering my sexual orientation and knew that she would not accept it. Somewhere along the line she called me and said, “Steven Spielberg is coming to my house.” But it wasn’t really him in the Shoah project. I said, “It’s so interesting to watch the video.” It’s in Spanish. She is very stoic in the video, but she shares so much with me. She said she wanted to see “Life is Beautiful” when I visited her. I was nervous because of the humorous way of approaching the subject which could be insulting to people but she loved it. She loved it! And I thought, “My gosh! You didn’t feel offended!” She got the point. She was so amazing because she was so playful. She didn’t lose that and that was really amazing to me. However, much of what everyone is talking about is so right on: You feel your sadness alone and you share your joy with other people. That was the rule, and she couldn’t really grasp it. I mean can you imagine having survived the Holocaust? And I am over here; I am so sad and so depressed. She couldn’t understand what on earth I could be sad about and there was so much going on inside of me. So when I think of the role that it played not just because of her but other people and the cultural norms to not talk about emotions, I became the person who held emotion. So it felt like it was leaking out all over the place and I was so emotional in contrast…She told me that she took care of a five-year-old girl while in Auschwitz and she fed her from her part of her piece of bread. My heart cracks open to think about that. The child was later killed.

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Women Share How They Were Affected By Hearing the Family Stories

Esha: (Kisses everyone at the altar, crying, gets on her knees, and lets out a loud cry.)

Elana: I feel like I am looking for someone; I don’t know where she is. I am looking for someone; I don’t know where she is. I don’t know who I am looking for.

Hanna: I am feeling numb. (I) thought (of) numbness as a weakness, not able to cry about anything. My graduate work is about Israeli and Palestinian conflict, (the) legacy of Holocaust survivors. I feel a-motional. I talked about it so much in my whole fucking life. I am a Jew. Hard to reconcile… does not look like I am in mourning. I live everyday in mourning. I don’t have a life. I stay at home and study because I am mourning everyday… pay homage to this people. When I walked in (this) room there was a connection, something familiar. It has been lovely.

Sarah (crying as she speaks): I feel like there are terrible things that happen to everyone on a daily basis. There is the Jewish Holocaust, and I am frustrated about what I do in a daily basis. I am a high school teacher. All I really want and (to) do with students is (get them to) tell their stories and be heard and hold space for them and hug them and (have them) hold each other. It’s so clear that is what needs to be happening and to not be doing that is pretty hard. Why would I do anything else, not do what is needed? There is another thing about joy, finding joy. There is a piece of that that needs to be found. How hard to reconcile what happened… what happened to my grandparents… they saw that? I am glad to be here and hear how each of you think.

Isabella: I realize that I have been living from this place of telling stories and not really embodying them. I can talk but that is not the healing. That is my way of not healing by talking about them. Here I am talking about them. I just want to cry and fall apart. I hope that I can do that. I feel tightness in throat and stomach… holding. Nicola says, “You can do it.” (Isabella starts crying, bawling, then continues.) It feels so hard to be sitting here amongst all of you and share these stories and realize how disconnected I am because I didn’t realize how my family didn’t talk about it. (You are) giving me permission to be sad and fall apart, instead of holding on to it, and being strong and happy. My wish is that people could have permission to do this in our life everyday, be humans and fall apart. Let my tears come down, not have to do it all by myself. I want this breath to stop colon cancer that has been in my family; so many people died.

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Invitation and Reactions to Dancing the Hora

At this point in the circle sharing, Lillian speaks inviting the group to dance.

Lillian: (Hearing your stories) I was flooded with something that came. (It) was making me smile almost involuntary floods of desire. At some point today if you want to, if we can dance the hora?

Nicola encouraged the group that if they wanted they could dance right then. The group danced and sang. After the dance, they responded as follows:

Hanna: Zionism followed the Holocaust. Demasculinization of the Jew in Europe… masculinization of the Jew…. It is completely invisible.

When we stopped dancing, Nicola noticed that Arya looked troubled and had a blank look on her face. Nicola: How are you feeling Arya?

Arya: I feel dizzy and shaky. It is a lot of psychic pain to take in and hold. I tend to dissociate. I feel sad and fear of feeling the sadness.

Nicola: Where do you feel it in your body?

Arya: My throat is constricted.

Nicola: Do you need to scream?

Arya: I want to scream “NO!”

Many of the participants began to scream and pound on the floor at the same time. When this stopped, the women started talking about anger and how anger is taboo. The group moved into working and expressing anger. Esha was one of the participants who took the expression of anger further. She introduced an exercise called, “I am angry that,” as a possible exercise for the group to do. She explained that it as an exercise in which two people stand up, facing each other. One person holds the space and helps the other person express anger by saying to them, “I am angry that….” This prompts the other person to respond and express anger. I volunteered to hold space for Esha to do this. We stood up and the rest of the women came closer to us forming a semi-circle.

Nicola: I am angry that…

Esha: I am angry that women get raped… That I cannot be angry because people think I am not okay… That I did not know that I was beautiful. I am angry, angry, angry, angry…. I am sad. (Esha began to cry. Other participants were crying, too.)

Lillian: That was awesome. That was amazing.

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Natalie: Yes, you are extremely courageous to step out into your feelings. It is giving me permission to go there.

Hanna: It’s so unusual to hear women’s anger, super loud… yes!

Nicola asked Natalie: Do you want to do it? (All the women laughed.)

Esha (holding the space for Natalie) : I am angry that…

Natalie: I am fucking angry that I had to mother my own mother… that she did not know what the fuck she was doing… that my father was a peripheral person that never talked about his feelings…

Circle to Close the Morning Before Going to Lunch

(After the altar sharing in the morning and before breaking up for lunch the group sat on the floor in a circle. Spontaneously, participants started coming closer and closer together to the point of our knees were touching. We held hands. One by one participants shared appreciations and thoughts about how the morning went.)

Arya: I appreciate that this is a group of really smart people with the space to feel things that are taboo. I thought I was going to have to resist being here the whole time. I appreciate not having to do that.

Elana: I am so in awe of how there is this availability here. It’s just amazing to me, the showing up, the offering, and the strength, just being true to what is happening. I feel like I spend a lot of time at a distance from all of that in myself.

Sarah: I am good. (It) feels good to be around women. How that is tied up with the legacies of the Holocaust, make space for everyone and their experiences,

Terri: (I am) humbled by the courage. This is not easy terrain, the in and out. Take care of ourselves…

Natalie: (I) appreciate the container to be, feel… intensely and fully.

Lillian: When you are connecting with people, how beautiful everyone is! Everyone radiating with a tenderness, open heartedness. (It’s) amazing to be in, feel a part of….

Hanna: We in a capitalist society are so alienated. In other cultures it is normal for women to come together and touch and share. I lived in suburbia and it sucks, so unnatural. Community is not allowed in our culture, because it would lead to people not going to industry. This is how it comes out.

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Isabella: (I’m) grateful to connect in a deep level, see myself in others, be touched, see more of the patterns within my family, me acknowledging critical voice… (It) feels really good to be connected, authentic, be able to talk about how I have this critical voice, but not take it as granted….

Responses to Psychodrama Catalyzed From Presentation of Poem “The Journey”

Esha, (sobbing heavily, said to Oma):I feel so selfish, I am supposed to keep my family together. How come I get to go and be an artist and teach and live my passions and follow my heart’s path and be loved? Those things are luxuries. All the women of Oma’s time could not follow love. Why do I get to follow love? How come I get to blaze my own trail and do my own thing and listen to my inner voice? Oma, I need your help. I feel so much shame. I do not feel I deserve to be happy.

The gatekeeper to Esha: You are so selfish. You should be ashamed of yourself. Who do you think you are to do whatever you want to do, to be an artist, to divorce your husband? You must sacrifice like the rest of the women in your family did.

Esha (taking the position of Oma; as Oma, starting to laugh and speaking to Esha’s double): Get over it! Shut up! Just leave him. I didn’t like him that much anyway. What is important is that you brought your daughter into the world. There is no need to stay in the relationship. Your daughter carries all of the spirit of our family. You need to think about my story: When it was time to leave your grandfather, it was time to leave your grandfather.

Esha (as Oma, speaking to the gatekeeper): She is very afraid. You are making her afraid. You have to cut it out. It is true that she is going to separate her family but she needs to do what she needs to do. It is her life. (If she doesn’t live it) she is teaching her daughter to not follow her heart, and we are done with that. I want my great-granddaughter to know that she needs to listen to her heart and that she has all of our support.

Esha (as the Friend, speaking to Arya sitting in for Esha): Trust yourself. It is okay to do what you need to do to be happy, to take care of yourself. When you do that you are an example to your daughter and future generations.

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Psychodrama De-Brief: Women Share How They Relate to Psychodrama

Arya (sharing from her personal story as well as from playing the role of Esha): Until our generation, marriage was sacrosanct. With my gay friends, it’s just a freaking relationship. Before it was a level of survival and support. Now we have the privilege of having a different relationship to it and that is awesome. Karmic weight is lifted. What a privilege to not have to sacrifice and have to keep the family together. Playing the role of Esha I felt a lot of blame and guilt.

Natalie: I had not made the connection until today, (that) the issue of my sexuality was larger. Having Holocaust survivors, (sexuality is) attached to survival and pro-creation. Having a child has not been the right circumstance. Who is going to pass the last name? There is grief around that, so much attachment to Jewish values about survival.

Lillian: There has been pressure from my parents to be Jewish and have kids, to become someone who takes care of other people, there are elements of these women’s personalities that are valued but some of the choices they made is put on us. The psychodrama reminded me when the voices are telling me the guilt, but when you see it embodied is powerful. You can talk back to the voices that are making you feel guilty. That is very powerful to see. I have never seen it done that way.

Hanna: I think that all of these people, they were caring, but at same time the message from them was to shape up. I do not think they were insensitive and too hard. This is life and it hurts and it’s funny. You fall down; you get hurt; that is life. I know we do not want to feel pain in our culture. Pushing away from pain: anti-depressants numb ourselves up. I was thinking of relationship break up, kind of fun I get to feel it, I cry and laugh. Why I do want to meet the person of my life and have a great life?

Arya: One of the things which I think is tied to the history of Jewish oppression and connection to the Holocaust, which I had not realized, I have a big thing I always feel like I need to get enough of each moment, guilt I need to get enough because these people did not get enough and at any moment it can change and not have it. Be so grateful, more grateful for what I have and also I have to seek out more and more… it is part of the Jewish experience that was pass through my family.

Sarah: I grew up with: “You cannot forget!” “You cannot let it happen again!” “Remember, remember!” … Fear Nazis were going to come any moment…. Everything is never okay. What is going to happen next? You cannot be happy. Something is about to go really wrong. You cannot trust. You got to be on the run but at same time work for social justice. I cannot let it happen again for Jew and others.

Hanna: My brother married a born again Christian. (My) sister (is) dating non-Jew. My parents didn’t want to go to (my) brother’s wedding but they went. My brother renounced Judaism because (he) says religion root of all evil, causes death and destruction. My parents really wanted us to be Jewish (but) moved us to a non-Jewish neighborhood.

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(My) father changed his last name from Polinsky to Palmer after his father killed himself, and I was told. Now I am supposed to be married to a Jew, not let anyone know I am Jewish and not act too Jewish. (My) parents said, “Do what we did. Observe some traditions.” It is confusing. We live in a world completely broken. There is no world anymore. Why do Shabbat by myself in my apartment? The world is gone. Community is gone. The world where traditions were made does not exist anymore. What is the point of doing it in this context?… My problem is that it is so individual. This religion is not about individual. In this culture we are supposed to be individual. I tried to light candles by myself. Is this really what grandparents want me to do? Keeping kosher does that make me Jewish… Anger… I am pissed. Several moments, I had fucking moments, “Fuck Nazis! We are still here alive, and abundant!” But (at the) same time… anger that we can create bastardization of religion in a country that is Christian and then call it a religion and call it what it was in a ghetto. It’s not the same thing we are living in our houses with no community. My father still changes his last name. It’s not the same thing as ghetto, as it was before. We are still living separate. I still straighten my hair, don’t wear my star. I don’t want people to know I am Jewish, I think it’s assimilation…

Closing Addressing the Ancestors And Future Generations

Arya: I miss you and I feel you and the work we are doing and the way I live my life. Even though it does not look like this is in your honor, it’s to honor you. I believe the work we are doing, lifting our own karmic burden, also is for you in some way. To the future generation: I hope the work we do lifts your karmic burden so you keep a line to the past without the pain and just knowledge and love.

Elana: I am tired. Sometimes I know you didn’t have time to rest and I know that you are resting with me and I also know that you see that the way in which we are reaching out to each other and the future and holding this miraculous circle of where we come from and who we are and where we see the potential of the future to go.

Sarah: I hope that that you guys are getting pleasure out of life because you deserve so much… I feel grateful for what you have been through. The value in family, legacy… I hope to continue to draw in your strength, to keep going and ask all of my ancestors to heal myself. I ask help healing myself around these issues so I can better work with others and help them heal, use all of your strength to help heal everyone of all generations. To the future: Learn that I learn to trust and care for each other and love ourselves, that we love each other, and keep working towards a different world, to heal from all this stuff.

Esha (singing in Spanish): Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto. Thanks to life that’s given me so much. Its given me laughter and its given me crying.

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Lillian: My safta always said, “You have to do what you love!” I was just thinking about that, standing here, looking at pictures, thinking maybe it would have meant different things to each of these people, in these smiling photos. I feel that they seemed to agree.

Isabella: Grandma, you are a star. Even through all of the hardship that you experienced, we still saw your sparkle. And I know that our people were forced to move from place to place in order to feel safe. So there is a diaspora of our people and I know that was hard to never know if you have a home so when you finally you had a home you did your best to keep it together so everyone can survive and that is why I am here. I want to let you know that I have a message to the future generations from what you taught me: Because of the people that came before us, there is so much possibility. From pain comes learning and growth. Now we can choose. We have the privilege to travel without being forced to leave we can come back home. There is a lot of power in that. When you are a stranger in a strange land you can really see how much you have in common with people that you don’t think are like you. Don’t forget about the people that came before you because that is at the core of you. I also want to say to the future that whether they use the lessons, that I need to take care of myself before taking care of other people. Self-care to move forward… Please, if there (is) anything I can offer you, it’s to learn how to take care of yourself and your own soul so you can give.

Hanna: I want to say to my Grandpa Nathan, trust that I am very sorry you lost your wife and two little boys, sorry I didn’t get to know my uncles and Dad never got to know his brothers. Makes me feel really shitty that the reason that I exist is because they died. If they had not died, my grandpa would not have come here and I would not have been born. But I also want to say that I live my life everyday remembering his life and his struggle. I always think about them. It breaks my heart to think that these things are still happening to people in the world. As far as future generations… “You have worked cut out for you, so good luck.”

Natalie: My Yaya, Grandma, always kept a playful slightly crazy spark, creative, engaging, loving life. Thank you for introducing me to music. I don’t know if I can sing this without crying. First songs I heard as a little girl… You gave me this song as a little girl: Toma el llavero abuelita y enseñame tu ropero, prometo quedarme quieto y no tocar lo que saques tu. To the future: “Don’t be afraid to bask in joy, to put yourself first, to love yourself and pursue joy in your life because when you taste joy and beauty that is hope to keep going when things get painful. Difficult circumstances arise. It is okay to pursue beauty, happiness, and joy. And from that place of being full you can give back to other people.

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Closing Circle – Song and Appreciations

Natalie: (I’m) grateful for the opportunity to share it beyond sharing with others people that had have similar feelings. (It) feels good as a container, explore things. It’s so easy with this subject to put it aside, resistance. It’s good to make a day to do it, happy to meet all of you and look forward to more connections.

Sarah: Thank you for sharing your ancestors, relationships with them, experiences of them, to have those connections up here, the feast, such a nurturing feast.

Arya: (I) appreciate you creating this, and an amazing container that we felt safe. I hope you do more, a course, a workshop.

Esha: (I) appreciate everyone for accepting me. (I was) afraid I was not Jewish enough, part of not being at any Jewish community anti-identity that has not served me, had I had an opportunity to be in a group like this one… I am grateful that you didn’t label as not Jewish enough, you held so much space for me to work through so much stuff, thank you, Nicola, for making it happen.

Isabella: thanks for bringing your gifts ‘cause although you may feel guilty for taking that space, we were gifts that we brought to that space. If you took time, that time was a gift. the pain of our ancestors are gifts to us to go deeper into healing. We are going to take it to the next level by being here, being present, and conscious of who we are now and where we come from. Thank you, Nicola. I feel I had instant community when I walked into the door and I never felt that in my life. I feel more comfortable here than with people that I have known for a really long time. Thank you.

Elana: After coming back from Auschwitz, I wanted peers to talk (to.) I found there were people from (my) parents’ generation but for me there was a huge gap. And then to show up here and find everyone blows my mind. I have been looking for this ever since I got back. (I’m) grateful for the journey that brought me here, and for all of our journeys that brought us here.

Arya: I am really appreciative. (It’s) very hard to normally speak the way we had. What people brought, it freed me up. The enthusiasm, it really opened me. It was awesome.

Sarah: (I’m) grateful to hear everyone’s stories, experiences relationship to Judaism. (It’s) such a gift. Terri, to have an ally is really important.

Terri: It’s hard to convey what an honor it is to witness to these stories, impossible to convey. Our histories can find connection and places where we need to find together. I saw the alliance before you started working. (It’s a) reminder of the power of shared stories, and the importance of connecting before connecting to the other stories. I can’t connect to other stories without connecting to my own root.

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Selected Answers from the Written Questionnaire at the End of the Research Day

How are you affected right now? What are you feeling?

Natalie: I feel sadness and relief. I feel grateful for the safe space to feel these feelings.

Hanna: … I feel like today was quite cathartic.

Isabella: I feel a sense of relief, exhaustion, and connection. The relief comes from removing some of the weight that I have been carrying for my family – because the pain is always unspoken. I am grateful to finally connect to powerful women with whom I share a common story – what an honor.

Arya: I feel spent and burnt emotionally… also I feel released and ease, more relaxed in my relationship to the past. Looking forward to getting the history of all of my grandparents in writing. This is a project catalyzed by this workshop!

In reviewing the day, where you surprised by anything that you noticed?

Natalie: How many people’s lives are affected by this legacy and how we still live with it today.

Hanna: That I was comfortable doing all the drama therapy stuff. I liked it. I was also surprised by how much I bonded with the other women.

Lillian: Yes! The similarities, parallels between other people’s stories and views or struggles with my own.

Elana: By the closeness I felt towards everyone and then the distance because I was witnessing what others were doing and saying for a long period of time and not engaging in it (not moved to respond/react/initiate).

Sarah: It’s good to be reminded about how different peoples’ Jewish experiences and backgrounds are. I forget how immersed I have been able to be in positive Jewish communities in the Bay that fit me. I know the Bay’s Jewish options pretty well.

Isabella: Yes, I was surprised that I was able to “let go” and “fall apart” in tears in front of a group and without shame. I was surprised as to how articulate and comfortable I felt more immediately with this group than with others. Also I was surprised as to how allowing for fluidity of the exercises unfold – as material arose – made healing possible.

Arya: the depth of sadness, the layers of sadness, how much I enjoy telling and hearing the stories.

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Did anything unexpected happen?

Natalie: Tibetans downstairs! They are still in a Holocaust! I sang and cried at the same time! I wrote down the words to “Gracias a la Vida” – then Esha went out and sang it!

Hanna: Yes. I thought Esha’s role-play and that whole experience was very unexpected.

Elana: Closeness of group, recognition of how much of a distance I can have to intimacy when I am not as engaged as others in the activity, a limit to how much I want to analyze.

Sarah: It was surprising and yet not surprising that what was up for people in their lives emotionally came up. It was neat to hear how people connect to different situations and ideas.

Isabella: I feel like I made instant friends – community. At the beginning of the day I felt nervous, unsure, disconnected, hopeful. At the end of the day I feel calm, fulfilled, connected, reassured, empowered, held, loved

Arya: I didn’t expect topics to veer far from “Holocaust” and then find their way back, connected somehow. I did not expect to be overwhelmed with emotion.

In reviewing today’s experiences, what is one of the more powerful moments of the day, and what meaning do you make of that?

Natalie: doing the “I am angry that” exercise – I will continue to do that in my life and the role playing in the chairs was very powerful for connecting with the different aspects of our psyches and have dialogue with them.

Hanna: When we did the “I feel angry” exercise. That was very powerful. I think I’ll need to try that.

Lillian: There were many powerful moments for me. One was when we all yelled and my eyes were closed and I could feel all these waves of heat and energy. Another was towards the beginning when Esha brought tremendous grief and emotion in front of the altar (while we were doing “vocal expression”) and sobbed. I really admired and wished I could do that too, it looked very liberating and fulfilling.

Elana: Each person checking in before lunch. I imagine I liked it so much because I experienced an equal playing field and what to talk about is open; an opportunity to share and be heard by everyone, no pressure to be or do anything other than revealing how you are feeling right then, that is enough.

Sarah: It was powerful to watch how certain people (including me) hold their pain and sadness, and how attempts to sublimate it often still result in visceral, clear expressions on people’s faces, in their tones of voice and in how they hold their bodies. That’s intense…

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Isabella: When anger exercise led to conversation about how we all deal with anger. And how beneath anger lies pain. Ritual: sharing metaphor of being vulnerable/stuck and tied up. Letting go in supportive circle. Hora dance.

Arya: I can’t put my finger on the moment – but there were times when others expressed deep pain and sadness, which resonated with me and suddenly I would and did tap into my own pain and sadness – feeling so much of that at once (and not dying) was powerful.

Post – Research Emails sent Voluntarily by Two Participants

Esha: …I feel free and so ready to be in love from a place of overflowing abundance and connection rather than dependence and fear… Thank you all so much for helping me do the work/play last weekend that I needed to do in order to dance into this space of possibility and strength.

Hanna: Yesterday was the most potent day of my life.

Post-Research Questionnaire

As you integrate the experience we shared; what thoughts, reflections, feelings or meanings are you having/making?

Isabella: The whole experience I was telling my therapist who is Jewish, I was talking with her about the story, interesting I walked into the room only times I felt immediately at home, almost like we didn’t have to say anything to each other, has to do with Jewish people, looking at the history of the diaspora, regardless of the Holocaust, the whole Jewish experience was like that in smaller increments, not the technology to kill us, think about that, I still even though my mom was brought up without knowing about Jewishness, it was passed on, the culture was passed on, I had this as a child, I am magnetized to Jews, caring around this trauma of the people and knowing you don’t have to say anything, unspoken relatedness, I felt that extremely strongly walking into the room, more strongly than usual because we were there knowing we were going to do healing work together, I had a really hard time letting my tears go and vulnerable in front of people, Nicola said let it go, even in therapeutic experiences I hear it, but I don’t feel amount of safety, the permission and safety was bigger I was able to cry from a deep place, and I was able to do that with my therapist because she comes from same background, something really profound about the holding that comes from being in a group of people that come from Jewish background because of the history the fact that we did it together with same intention, intensifies the permission to release, to feel connected, to touch, be held by others in physical sense, because of my family the way the dealt was all about pushing it away there was a sense of loss about being held in the pain, so it was as a group we created a new home, and a place to be able to be held that wasn’t offered up by families, could not do it, it was beautiful.

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Lillian; … what feels perhaps most important is the realization that this legacy is a very big deal, has really impacted me and my family and our dynamics and my relationships and *everything* and I’ve never really explored that very much before! So it feels like something a bit daunting and exciting that I want to look at more.

Elana: I am feeling more connected to this particular community, identity – 3rd generation female descendants – and more aware of what that identity is in relationship to the rest of my life. I also continue to feel close to the group as a whole.

And last, if you could send a message or say something to the third generation descendants of survivors of the Holocaust, what would you say to them?

Isabella: Active statement: find a way, a community, people that you can share your stories with and heal with, so that we can take our strengths into the future, be more empowered in the future rather than carry this heavy load, recommendation for this generation to find a way to work what is there and heal with one another and to talk about it and to be able to experience the heaviness of the sadness and the pain, because when you are able to experience it and let it go and reflect with other people you don’t negatively impact the next generation… just having conversations with my Jewish friends they are saying what is this about they are doing the work because is in their consciousness, bringing the unconsciousness to consciousness, talk about the fact that it exist with other people, if you start doing the work when you start to look good, I have this amazing ingredient people: where did you get that I want to do it too, how can you explore it I want to do it too, cause I feel that weight with my family, just talking about the work is impactful, it gives them permission to be more wholly who they are instead of going I am depressed, or angry but is all right, that is a huge part of genogram, take that weight off person who is doing it and give them permission to live, it is not my fault that I am doing all these things that are negative, I can trace it back, is a permission, give you more permission to take responsibility for what is yours, by knowing what is coming from other places it helps you take responsibility for what you do in your life, separating it out and bringing light and clarity to it.

Lillian: hmmmmm.... I think I’d say “go out there and talk about this with other descendants! There is a lot to learn from putting light on this darkness, for all of us, and all the world's community! This is important!!”

Elana: I’m not sure that I have a ‘message’, maybe that there is a way to find support, even within this generation.

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APPENDIX 17

SUMMARY OF LEARNINGS

The focus of this research was to explore the impact of the legacy of the

Holocaust on third generation descendant survivors. More specifically, the aim of this study was to find out how through ritual and drama therapy practices, third generation may process the trauma that might have been passed down and any feelings of survivor guilt they may have. Knowing that an ancestor or a family member has suffered or is suffering may produce guilt in a person and therefore they may feel that they do not have a right to a better life, a healthier life, or a different life because they may feel that they are betraying their ancestors or family members. Survivor guilt may be seen through its derivatives, ways in which a person might devoid themselves of a good life or do not allow themselves to make choices they want to make that make them feel good for fear that they may betray their ancestors or family members. The focus of this research was to explore what happens when third generation descendants come together to explore their affects and feelings around being descendants of survivors of the Holocaust. More specifically this research focused on how third generation may carry survivor guilt and what how they might process and metabolize the trauma and the guilt given the space to ritualize together.

This research study led to the following Cumulative Learning entitled “Diving

Deep and Emerging with New Possibilities,” which states as follows: When third- generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors gathered to explore and give voice

274 to their experience, they processed the conflicted roles, expectations, and pressures put upon them by the family and broader community, and communitas was created which brought healing about these experiences. Third-generation women may be expected to marry, have children, and carry on Jewish tradition, as well as to be the carriers of the trauma instead of recovering from it and be the lineage bearers. Recovering from post-

Holocaust trauma includes processing these pressures so third generation members need not act from guilt but instead from an empowered place. Third-generation women are in a position to digest and recover from the Holocaust when given the opportunity to do so, and communitas can support this process.

This Cumulative Learning is based upon four major learnings. The first learning, entitled “Stripping Naked,” states as follows: When the participants, third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors, gathered as a group and embraced the opportunity to share their Holocaust personal and family stories for the first time in such a group, a unique safety emerged. Meeting with other third-generation women gave participants a sense of safety to open up and meet shadow aspects that they had not explored before. Sharing similar histories provided a sense of community that participants needed to feel to be able to face and process their experience.

This study revealed that, in fact, third generation descendants are very much affected by the Holocaust. When given the opportunity and the safety to face unknown aspects of

275 their experience, third generation members expressed deep grief, rage, fear, guilt, and shame.

The third Learning, entitled “The Helpers: Emergence of the Friend in the Form of the Ancestors,” states as follows: Through engaging with the Friend in the form of voices associated with their ancestors, gatekeeping dynamics were transmuted, so allowing psychic movement and transformation for the participants. Third generation members may believe that the ancestors are not supportive of them living a full life. The study revealed that when third-generation women face these voices, they are actually internalized critical voices and that the ancestors on the contrary are their allies instead of their saboteurs. Connecting with the ancestors and asking for their support can help third generation descendants of the Holocaust heal and transform.

The fourth Learning is entitled “Re-emergence through Re-joining Community:

We Laughed and Cried at the Same Time,” and states as follows: When third-generation women descendants of Holocaust survivors explored the impact of the Holocaust, drawing upon Jewish community, ritual, and practices was a balm for their experiences of trauma, loss, and guilt and provided a haven through this temporary small Jewish community of women. Participants connected to practices that the ancestors have done in the past to help them hold grief and joy. These practices helped participants feel a sense of community that they needed in order to be able to let go, to feel and express and integrate what they were experiencing. Feeling a sense of community, connection, and belonging to a Jewish community and to the larger community and world is crucial to being able to recover from a sense of brokenness and exile.

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NOTES

Chapter 1

1. William G. Niederland, “The Survivor Syndrome: Further Observations and Dimensions,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 29 (1981): 413-423; Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Touchstone, 1967).

2. Niederland, “The Survivor Syndrome,” 424; Lifton, Death in Life.

3. Yael Danieli, “Heterogeneity Adaptation in Families of Survivors,” in The Psychological Perspectives of the Holocaust and of its Aftermath, ed. Randolph L. Brahan (New York: Institute of Holocaust Studies, 1988), 123.

4. Dan Bar-On et al., “Multigenerational Perspectives on Coping with the Holocaust Experience: An Attachment Perspective for Understanding the Development Sequel of Trauma across Generations,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 22, no. 2 (1998): 315-38, 324; Carol A. Kidron, “Surviving a Distant Past: A Case Study of the Cultural Construction of Trauma Descendant Identity,” Ethos 31, no. 4 (2004): 513-544, 530-535; Lisa McCann and Laurie Anne Pearlman, “Vicarious Traumatization: A Framework for Understanding the Psychological Effects of Working with Victims, ” Journal of Traumatic Stress 3, no. 1 (1990): 131-149.

5. Louise J. Kaplan, No Voice is Ever Wholly Lost (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 234.

6. Arnold H. Modell, “The Origin of Certain Forms of Pre-Oedipal Guilt and the Implications for a Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 52, (1971): 337-346, 340; Lynn E. O’Connor, Jack W. Berry and Joseph Weiss, “Interpersonal Guilt, Shame and Psychological Problems.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 18, no. 2 (1999): 181-203, 183.

7. Modell, “The Origin of Certain Forms of Pre-Oedipal Guilt and the Implications for a Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects,” 340.

8. Charles R. Figley, Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Stress Disorder in Those Who Treat the Traumatized (New York: Brunner/Mazel, Publishers, 1995), xiv.

9. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia. course at Meridian University, David Westwood’s notes, September 15, 2005.

10. Natan P. F. Kellermann, “The Long-Term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” Journal of Loss and Trauma 6 (2001): 197-198.

11. Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History and the Legacy of The Holocaust (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 11.

12. Harold A. Barocas and Carol B. Barocas, “Manifestations of Concentration Camp Effects on the Second Generation,” American Journal of Psychiatry 7 (1980), 820-821.

13. Dina Wardi, Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.

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14. Rachel Lev-Wiesel, “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma Across Three Generations,” Qualitative Social Work 6, no.1 (2007): 75-94.

15. Ibid.

16. Katya Cornejo, “L'dor v'dor from Generation to Generation: Attachment in Third Generation Holocaust Survivors,” Ph.D. diss., California Institute of Integral Studies, 2009.

17. Julia Chaitin, “Issues and Interpersonal Values Among Three Generations in Families of Holocaust Survivors,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 19, no. 3 (2002): 379-402, 395.

18. Dan Bar-On and Selah, “The Vicious Cycle Between Current Social and Political Attitudes Towards The Holocaust Among Israeli Youngsters,” Psychologia 2, no. 2 (1991):126-138.

19. Natan P.F. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma: Psychological Effects and Treatment (Bloomington IN: iUniverse, 2009), 95.

20. Ruth Andrew Ellenson, ed., The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide To Guilt (New York: Dutton, 2005).

21. Rachel Kadish, “Guilt Judo” in The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide To Guilt, Ruth Andrew Ellenson, ed. (New York: Dutton, 2005), 37-48.

22. Ibid, 40.

23. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma, 83.

24. Madeleine Seifter Abrams, “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Recent Contributions from the Literature of Family Systems Approaches to Treatment,” American Journal of Psychotherapy 53, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 225-232, 225.

25. Armand Volkas, “Healing the Wounds of History: Drama Therapy in Collective Trauma and Intercultural Conflict Resolution,” in Current Approaches in Drama Therapy, David Read Johnson and Renée Emunah, eds. (Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 2009), 149-163.

26. Ibid., 159.

27. Lisa Herman, "Engaging Images of Evil: An Imaginal Approach to Historical Trauma," ReVision: Journal of Consciousness and Transformation 31, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 44-52.

28. Yaacov Naor, “The Theater of the Holocaust,” in Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy: Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives, Stephen K. Levine and Ellen G. Levine, eds. (London: JKP, 1999), 223-238.

29. Carolyn Shoshana Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones Reclaiming Jewish Identity and Healing Intergenerational Trauma Through Ritual Connection to Collective Memory,” Ph.D. diss., Meridian University, 2007.

30. Ibid, vi.

31. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar IIIb, coursework at Meridian University, author’s notes, January 20, 2007.

278

32. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Cornell paperbacks, 1969), 131.

33. Ibid.

34. Vivian Patraka, “Situating History and Difference: The Performance of the Term Holocaust in Public Discourse,” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin, eds. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 54.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., 55.

37. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia, coursework at Meridian University, author’s notes, September 17, 2005.

38. Aftab Omer, Key Definitions Handout, email to author, Meridian University, November 12, 2007.

39. Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia.

40. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

41. Ibid.

42. Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit (New York: Routledge, 1996), 1.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 4.

45. Ibid.

46. Kellermann, “The Long-Term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” 197-198.

47. Modell, “The Origin of Certain Forms of Pre-Oedipal Guilt and the Implications for a Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects”; Aaron R. Denham, “Rethinking Historical Trauma: Narratives of Resilience,” Transcultural Psychiatry 45, no. 3 (September 2008): 391-414.

48. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

49. Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia.

50. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

51. Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia.

52. Ibid.

53. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

279

54. Aftab Omer, “Dissertation Handbook, 3rd” Edition” Meridian University, 2006.

Chapter 2

1. Niederland, “The Survivor Syndrome,” 420.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Bruno Bettelheim, Surviving and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 25-30; Primo Levi, The Drowned and The Saved (New York: Summit Books, 1988), 71-87; Elie Weisel, Legends or Our Time (New York: Avon, 1970), 212. Both authors are survivors of the Holocaust. They feel that others died on their behalves. They also write that they feel guilty because during the persecutions they had thoughts of wanting someone else to die instead of them. A hidden thought an inmate would have is: “If my neighbor gets killed before I do, I get another chance to live.”

5. Lifton, Death in Life, 479. While Lifton’s approach to survivor guilt is not significantly different from Niederland’s, Lifton states that he prefers the term “guilt over survival priority” rather than survivor guilt “to emphasize issues of sequence and timing in the question of who dies and who survives.” He explains that survivors feel a sense of debt and responsibility towards the dead and the guilt they feel is related to this responsibility. He remarks that “death guilt begins, then, in the gap between that physical and psychic inactivation and what one feels called upon to do and feel.”

6. Robert J. Lifton, “The Survivors of the Hiroshima Disaster and the Survivors of Nazi Persecution,” in Massive Psychic Trauma, Henry Krystal, ed. (New York: International Universities Press Inc, 1968), 124.

7. Ibid., 495.

8. Ibid., 184.

9. Ibid.,

10. Bessel A. van der Kolk, “In Terror’s Grip: Healing The Ravages Of Trauma,” in Cerebrum 4, 34-50. NY: The Dana Foundation (2002).

11. Ibid.

12. Tom Williams, “Diagnosis and Treatment of Survivor Guilt: The Bad Penny Syndrome,” in Human Adaptation to Extreme Stress: From The Holocaust to Vietnam, John P. Wilson, Zev Harel and Boaz Kahana, eds. (New York: Plenum Press, 1988), 323.

13. Carol A. Kidron, “Surviving a Distant Past: A Case Study of the Cultural Construction of Trauma Descendant Identity,” Ethos 31, no. 4 (2004): 513-544, 530-535; Eva Fogelman, “Therapeutic Alternatives for Holocaust Survivors and Second Generation,” in The Psychological Perspectives of the Holocaust and of Its Aftermath, Randolph L. Brahan, ed. (New York: Institute of Holocaust Studies, 1988), 79-100; J. Sigal, et al., “Some Second Generation Effects of Survival of the Nazi Persecution,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 43, no. 4 (1973): 320-327, 323.

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14. Danieli, “Heterogeneity Adaptation in Families of Survivors,” 123. She writes, “thus guilt also serves as a commemorative function and as a vehicle of loyalty to the dead.” Danieli notes that there is another important and powerful function of survivor guilt which is “to serve as a defense against existential helplessness.” Danieli proposes that survivor guilt plays yet another function. By continuing the connection to the dead it helps the person not feel alone and helps them have a sense of belonging.

15. Ibid.

16. Modell, “The Origin of Certain Forms of Pre-Oedipal Guilt and the Implications for a Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects,” 340.

17. Ibid., 342.

18. Ibid., 340.

19. Michael Friedman, “Toward a Reconceptualization of Guilt,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 21, no. 4 (1985): 501-547; 529. Friedman revised Freud’s concept of guilt and proposes a new definition that includes other theorists’ and his own understanding of the concept. Friedman explains that Freud’s theoretical framework was based on his view that human interactions are mostly based on competition rather than cooperation. According to Friedman, Freud explained that the child, being dependent on their parents, condemns the child’s actions that displease the parents as “bad.” The child, afraid of losing the parents’ love, develops “social anxiety.” As the child grows up they internalize this parental authority as the voice of an inner police and the anxiety then is experienced as a sense of guilt. Friedman writes, “The affective content of guilt is fear and the cognitive content is the belief that one may lose the love and protection of one’s parents.”

20. Ibid., 529.

21. Lynn E. O’Connor, Jack W. Berry and Joseph Weiss, “Interpersonal Guilt, Shame and Psychological Problems,” 183. Drawing upon interpersonal cognitive/psychodynamic theories of mental functioning, the authors explain that psychopathology is derived from pathogenic beliefs that develop in response to difficult experiences during childhood. Pathogenic beliefs warn people that if they attempt to pursue normal developmental goals, they will harm either themselves or someone they love. Pathogenic beliefs that predict harming others give rise to guilt. Thus, a person that in childhood experienced neglect or abuse by their parents may experience shame. This same person may experience guilt when they attempt to work with their experience of neglect. They may feel guilt for stepping on parental authority as if they are doing something wrong for challenging authority.

22. Ibid., 185. The authors define separation guilt as “characterized by the pathogenic belief that to separate from or be different from loved ones will harm them and constitutes an act of disloyalty,” and they explain omnipotent responsibility guilt as the guilt that “involves an exaggerated sense of responsibility and concern for the happiness and well-being of others.”

23. Lynn E, O’Connor et al., “Survivor Guilt, Submissive Behaviour and Evolutionary Theory: The Down-Side of Winning in Social Comparison,” British Journal of Medial Psychology 73 (2000): 519- 530.

24. Ibid., 520.

25. Ibid., 188.

26. One of the ways that the authors have researched this topic is through developing tests and using them as tools in their research. There are several tests that are geared to measuring guilt and shame,

281

including the Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire which is theoretically related to maladaptive beliefs and irrational guilt concerning the fear of harming others. The questionnaire assesses for survivor/outdoing guilt, separation guilt, and omnipotent responsibility guilt and a fourth subscale, self-hate which related to a sense of badness, proneness to shame. Some examples from the survivor guilt questionnaire are: “I conceal or minimize my success”; “I am depressed around unhappy people”; “It makes me very uncomfortable to receive better treatment than the people I am with”, “I am uncomfortable talking about my achievements in social situations.” Examples of questions in the separation guilt section are: “I feel that bad things may happen to my family if I do not stay in close contact with them”; “It makes me uncomfortable to have critical thoughts about my parents”; “I am very reluctant to express an opinion that is different from the opinions held by my family or friends.” By using these and other tests that measure guilt, shame, and depression the authors found a correlation between interpersonal guilt and depression.

27. Donald L. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), 59.

28. Ibid. According to Nathanson, each affect is understood as an invariable script that once triggered runs its brief course, organizing experience into analogous affective states at varying levels of intensity. If the stimulus is maintained, affects stimulate longer lasting feelings, emotions, and moods, which are more varied, and shaped by individual experience. While affect lasts a few seconds, an emotion lasts longer, as long as the person continues to find memories that trigger that affect.

29. Ibid.

30. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

31. Benjamin James Sadock, Virginia Alcott Sadock, Pedro Ruiz, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009).

32. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia. course at Meridian University, David Westwood’s notes, September 15, 2005.

33. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

34. Ibid.

35. Omer, Integrative Seminar 1a.

36. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

37. Omer, Integrative Seminar 1a,

38. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

39. Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma, 1.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 3.

43. Ibid.

282

44. Ibid., 3.

45. Ibid., 4.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., 5.

48. Ibid.

49. Augusto Boal and Susana Epstein, “The Cop in the Head: Three Hypotheses,” [article online]; http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146067; Internet website; accessed 14 September 2011.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 38.

53. Kellermann, “The Long-Term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” 198.

54. Ibid., 213.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid., 92.

59. Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger, The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree (London: Routledge, 1998), 3.

60. Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger, “Health and Death: Hidden Links through Family Tree,” in Psychodrama with Trauma Survivors: Acting Out Your Pain, Peter Felix Kellerman and M.K. Hudgins, eds. (England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000), 287.

61. Ibid., 291.

62. Kaplan, No Voice is Ever Wholly Lost, 218.

63. Ibid.

64. Yael Danieli, ed., International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma: The Plenum Series of Stress and Coping (New York: Plenum Press, 1998).

65. Ibid., 7.

66. Yael Danieli, “The Heterogeneity of Postwar Adaptation in Families of Holocaust Survivors,” in The Psychological Perspectives of the Holocaust And Its Aftermath, R. L. Braham, ed. (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1988), 109-127.

283

67. Naomi Mor, “Holocaust Messages from the Past,” Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal 12, no. 5 (1984): 371-379.

68. Abrams, “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma,” 225.

69. Ibid., 229.

70. McCann and Pearlman, “Vicarious Traumatization,” 133.

71. Ibid., 137.

72. Ibid., 138.

73. Figley, Compassion Fatigue, 5

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid., 6.

76. Yael Danieli, “Psychotherapists’ Participation in the Conspiracy of Silence About the Holocaust,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 1, no. 1 (1984): 23-42, 30.

77. Nanette C. Auerhahn and Dori Laub, “The Primal Scene of Atrocity: The Dynamic Interplay Between Knowledge and Fantasy of the Holocaust in Children of Survivors,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 15, no. 3 (1998): 360-377, 360. Auerhahn and Laub have done extensive research with Holocaust survivors and their families through clinical work and oral histories.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid., 362.

80. Ibid.

81 . Ibid.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid., 363.

84. Ibid., 364.

85. Ibid., 375.

86. Ibid.

87. Hoffman, After Such Knowledge, 3. Hoffman was born in Poland in 1945 to Jewish survivors of the war,

88. Ibid., xv.

89. Ibid., 13.

284

90. Ibid., 11.

91. Ibid., 29.

92. Ibid.

93. Anna B. Baranowsky et al., “PTSD Transmission: A Review of Secondary Traumatization in Holocaust Survivor Families,” Canadian Psychology, University of Ottawa 39, no. 4 (2002): 39.

94. Barocas and Barocas, “Manifestations of Concentration Camp Effects on the Second Generation,” 820-821.

95. Wardi, Memorial Candles, 6.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid, 109.

98. Ibid.

99. Kaplan, No Voice is Ever Wholly Lost, 235.

100. Ibid.

101. Edward A. Mason, Director/Producer, “Breaking the Silence: The Generation After the Holocaust,” (USA: PBS Documentary, 1984).

102. As one of the children acknowledges in the film, they did not experience the Holocaust directly but they experience the “living concentration camp of the mind.” One of the children explains that one of the reasons she wants to know her mother’s experience is because it will help her separate psychologically from her mom and hold her experience in a different way. Her mom in turn does not want to talk because as her daughter says: “she does not want to come to terms with the past, she does not want to accept that her own mother was gassed.” The film shows the first time that daughter and mother discuss this conflict. As the children express in the film, not talking about it does not take the pain away.

103. Mark L. Yoslow, “The Pride and Price of Remembrance: An Empirical View of Transgenerational Post-Holocaust Trauma and Associated Transpersonal Elements in the Third Generation,” Ph.D. diss., Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, 2007.

104. Lev-Wiesel, “Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma Across Three Generations,” 75-94.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid., 90.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid., 91.

109. Flora Hogman, “Trauma and Identity through Two Generations of the Holocaust,” Psychoanalytic Review 85, no. 4 (1995): 551-578.

110. Cornejo, “L'dor v'dor from Generation to Generation.”

285

111. Ibid., 4.

112. Ibid., 40.

113. Ibid., 5.

114. Ibid., 4.

115. Ibid., 98.

116. Ibid.

117. John Sigel and Morton Weinfeld, Trauma and Rebirth: Intergenerational Effects of the Holocaust (New York: Praeger, 1989).

118. Ibid.

119. Chaitin, “Issues and Interpersonal Values Among Three Generations in Families of Holocaust Survivors,” 395.

120. Ibid.

121. Ibid., 398.

122. Bar-On and Selah, “The Vicious Cycle Between Current Social and Political Attitudes Towards The Holocaust Among Israeli Youngsters,” 126-138.

123. Alon Lazar, Tal Litvak-Hirsch, and Julia Chaitin, “Between Culture and Family: Jewish- Israeli Young Adults Relation to the Holocaust as a Cultural Trauma,” Traumatology, Sage Publications 2008.

124. Ibid.

125. Dan Bar-On, “Transgenerational After Effects of the Holocaust in Israel: Three Generations,” in Breaking Crystal: Writing and Memory After Auschwitz, Efraim Sicher, ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 97.

126. Ibid.

127. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma, 95.

128. Ibid., 99.

129. Ibid.

130. Ibid.

131. Yoslow, “The Pride and Price of Remembrance,” 2007.

133. Ibid., iv.

134. Ibid., 224.

286

135. See March of the Living website at http://www.marchoftheliving.org/; accessed 14 May 2011. The organization’s website explains that as a Holocaust education program, the MOL allows Jewish youth from around the world not only to “learn from or about history, but to enter into history… bolster the Jewish identity of the next generation of Jewish youth… understand the importance of the existence of Israel, as the spiritual centre and homeland of the Jewish people, to learn the lesson that Jews never again allow themselves to be defenseless… (and) to develop a love for the people of Israel and an appreciation of the hardships and sacrifice endured by her citizens on behalf of Israel.”

136. Yoav Shamir, Defamation, (Israel: Cinephil, 2009). Shamir joins tens of thousands of Israeli youth who go to Poland to learn about the Holocaust and documents their journey on film. One of the participants, a third generation descendant, explains in the film that he remembers his grandmother talking about the Holocaust and from her he learned the expression, “never forgive and never forget.” Another young person reflects on being raised as if they are hated, saying, “if we are raised thinking we are hated, this will strengthen Israel and my Jewish identity.” Shamir then goes on to show that the “so called anti- Semitism” that organizations like the Anti-defamation League promote is exaggerated and it creates more fear than necessary.

137. Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2006). A third generation descendant of Holocaust survivors, Medlesohn writes about his world- wide travels in search of details about the lives and fates of a maternal great-uncle, his wife, and their four daughters who lived in Ukraine and were killed during the Nazi occupation. As a child, Mendelsohn had many questions and was inclined to take the role as the family historian. As an adult he had enough clues to follow the trail and find out what happened to his great uncle and cousins. He represents a generation not usually able to do so, but he tries to fill in the gaps to understand what is behind the silences he grew up with. Mendelsohn writes about how when he would walk in the room his relatives would become silent. He knew there was something missing and nobody would tell him what it was. He did not know what it was but he did everything he could within his power to see if he could find out what was missing and hidden. He is one of the few from this generation who does. He finds information that nobody knew regarding the experiences and fate of his relatives. Mendelsohn suggests that one cannot look forward until one looks back, until one knows how they came to be who they are and what has been lost.

138. Melissa Eddy, “Holocaust Survivor’s Dance Sparks Debate,” The Press Democrat, Sunday, July 18, 2010. The video has been watched on YouTube over 500,000 times and has become very controversial. Eddy reports that the video “sparked debate over whether the images show disrespect for those who perished or are an exuberant celebration of life.” However, Korman says: “My mother and father both went through Auschwitz, and this is a way they want to express their joy of being alive, of surviving, of an affirmation of their lives. They both say: ‘we came from the ashes, now we dance.’” Kohn himself says: “Who could come with their grandchildren?... Most of them are dead… If somebody had asked me then that I would come 62 years later with my grandchildren to Auschwitz, I would send him to a madhouse...The dancing was very important, because we are alive; we survived…We created a generation, a new generation, a beautiful generation.”

139. Helen Epstein, Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), 9-31; Dorothy Rabinowits, New Lives: Survivors of the Holocaust Living in America (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1976); John J. Sigal and Morton Weinfeld, Trauma and Rebirth: Intergenerational Effects of the Holocaust (New York: Praeger, 1989), 15-30.

140. Denham, “Rethinking Historical Trauma,” 397.

141. Dan Bar-On et al., “Multigenerational Perspectives on Coping with the Holocaust Experience,” 324.

287

142. Ibid., 324-325.

143. Harvey A.1 Barocas; Carol B. Barocas, “Separation-Individuation Conflicts in Children of Holocaust survivors,” Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy 11, no. 1 (Spr-Sum 1980): 6-14, 12.

144. Art Spiegelman, Maus Volume I and Volume II (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973 and 1986). One of the best-known narratives written by a child of Holocaust survivors is Spiegelman’s two- volume Maus, written in comic book form. Based on an interview Spiegelman did with his father about his experience during the Holocaust, Spiegelman re-tells the story with Germans represented as cats and Jews as mice.

145. S. Hanala Stadner, My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt (Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press, 2006), xv.

146. Ellenson, ed., The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide To Guilt, 1.

147. Ibid., 2.

148. Ibid., 5.

149. Kadish, “Guilt Judo,” 37-48.

150. Ibid.

151. Ibid., 48.

152. Ibid.

153. Ibid., 38.

154. Ibid., 48.

155. Ibid.

156. Jack Felman, “Growing Up As A Child of Holocaust Survivors,” (Melbourne, Australia: descendants of the Shoah, Inc., undated); [article online]; http://www.dosinc.org.au/stories5.html; Internet website; accessed 14 May 2011.

157. Ethel S. Person, Feeling Strong: The Achievement of Authentic Power (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2002), 3.

158. Ibid.

159. Ibid., xvi, xvii.

160. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

161. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power (New York: Haper Collins, 2007).

162. Rollo May, Power and Innocence: A search for the Sources of Violence (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1972), 23.

163. Ibid., 40.

288

164. Ibid., 43.

165. John E., Mack, “Power, Powerlessness, and Empowerment in Psychotherapy,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes 57 (1994):179-199, 178-180.

166. Ibid., 181.

167. Sam Keen, “What is Power?” Spirituality and Health Magazine, (May/June 2004): 33.

168. Ibid.

169. Ibid.

170. Omer, Group Process II.

171. Ibid.

172. Ibid.

173. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar IIIb, coursework at Meridian University, author’s notes, January 20, 2007.

174. Omer, Psychology and Community Making I.

175. Omer, Group Process II.

176. Aftab Omer, Integrative Seminar IIIb.

177. Ibid.

178. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

179. Turner, The Ritual Process, 131.

180. Ibid., 95.

181. Ibid., 106.

182. Ibid.

183. Ibid., 103.

184. Stephen K. Levine, Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1992), 29.

185. Ibid.

186. Ibid., 31.

187. Adam Blatner, Foundations of Psychodrama: History, Theory and Practice (NY: Springer Publishing Company, 2000), 1.

289

188. Ibid.

189. Ibid., 2.

190. Ibid., 100.

191. Ibid., 101.

192. Ibid., 102.

193. Ibid., 103.

194. Ibid.

195. Ibid., 104.

196. Ibid., 107.

197. Ibid.

198. Jean Shinoda Bolen, The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World (Berkeley: Conari Press, 1999), 4.

199. Ibid., 6.

200. Ibid.

201. Ibid., 14.

202. Ibid., 15.

203. Ibid.

204. Armand Volkas, “Keynote Address, at the 2002 Annual Conference of National Association of Drama Therapy” Dramaspone – The newsletter of the NADT (National Association of Drama Therapy), (2003 Winter/Spring 2003) Issue (2002 Keynote Address Annual Conference):, 1. Volkas is the son of two Jewish WWII resistance fighters and survivors of Auschwitz. He is the founder of Healing the Wounds of History, a workshop that includes drama therapy process and theater techniques in order to work with participants from two cultures with a common legacy of conflict and historical trauma. He has dedicated his work to understanding how “nations and cultures integrate a heritage of perpetration, victimization and collective trauma.” He wants to comprehend how collective trauma is passed down through the generations. As a drama therapist he developed an arts-oriented approach to working with intercultural conflict resolution in which collective trauma plays a primary role.

205. Ibid. In 1989, Volkas first used this process with sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors and Nazis. Participants “enacted each other’s stories and dreams, explored specific memories and dilemmas, and created rituals to help each other find some closure with particularly painful experiences.” Since that time, he has continued to conduct workshops in Germany and United States on the legacy of the War and has subsequently used it with many other cultures in conflict, such Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Turks, and Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.

206. Volkas, “Healing the Wounds of History,” 149-163.

290

207. Ibid., 147.

208. Ibid., 148.

209. Ibid., 159.

210. Ibid.

211. Ibid., 170.

212. Lisa Herman, “Traces of the Holocaust in the Present: the Krakow-Auschwitz,” (CITY: Psychodrama Project, 2010). (unpublished paper) Herman provided this unpublished paper to the author. Herman has also been facilitating this kind of work since the 1980s, including facilitating groups of Jewish youth upon their return to Israel from the March of the Living. The inter-generational workshop brought people from eight different countries and backgrounds whose parents and grandparents had been affected directly by the war. Led by Naor (a Jewish Israeli and son of survivors) and co-worker Hilde Gott (a German non-Jew and granddaughter of Nazis), the group explored their relationship to Auschwitz-Birkenau using psychodrama and other expressive arts. One of the days of the workshop was dedicated to creating rituals in the concentration camp. Each participant chose a site and engaged the others in ritual. For one of the rituals, which was led by a non-Jew, everyone entered into one of the barracks where candles were lit. They stood in circle touching and each sang a lullaby in their own language from their childhood. At one of the monuments near Crematorium, Herman, a Jewish participant, put a photo of her parents, and sang a mournful song while lighting a candle. She wrote a poem, gave a line to each participant and asked them to play with it like a Jazz ensemble.

213. Ibid., 3.

214. Ibid.

215. Herman, "Engaging Images of Evil,” 44-52.

216. Ibid.

217. Ibid.

218. Naor, “The Theater of the Holocaust,” 223-238. Naor is an Isreali Jew, son of two Holocaust survivors. Naor has led many such psychodrama workshops for Jewish sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors and Germans of the generation after World War II in Germany and Israel. Participants explore spontaneous, expressive, and creative ways of dealing with the interrelationship of the persecutor-victim roles within each of them and in society. He chooses therapeutic theater and psychodrama as the main tools for working with this population because these tools use the body as the major medium of expression, instead of relying only on words.

219. Ibid., 238.

220. Eva Fogelman, “Impact on the Second and Third Generations,” in Children Surviving Persecution: An International Study of Trauma and Healing, Judith S. Kestenberg and Charlotte Kahn, eds. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 85.

221. Ibid., 86.

222. Alan L. Berger and Naomi Berger, Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors and Perpetrators (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 6.

291

223. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma, 11.

224. Ibid.

225. Ibid.

226. Rachel N. Baum, “Never to Forget: Pedagogical Memory and Second-Generation Witness,” in Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and The Representation of Historical Trauma, Roger I. Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, Claudia Eppert, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 94.

227. Ibid.

228. Bjorn Krondorfer, Remembrance and Reconciliation: Encounters between Jews and Germans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1995.

229. Ibid., 1.

230. Ibid., 18.

231. Ibid., 80.

232. Ibid., 131.

233. Paul Valent, “How The Holocaust Informs Trauma For Me,” (Melbourne, Australia: descendants of the Shoah, Inc., undated); [article online]; http://www.dosinc.org.au/stories5.html; Internet website; accessed 14 May 2011.

234. Ibid.

235. Ibid.

236. Ibid.

237. Ibid.

238. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1993); Rodger Kamenetz, Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997); quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 106.

239. Schachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift, xx; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 106.

240. Ibid., xx-xxi.

241. David Cooper, God is a Verb (New York: Riverhead Books, 1992), 13.

242. Kamenetz, Stalking Elijah, 19-20.

243. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 7.

244. Ibid.

292

245. Marcia Prager, The Path of Blessing: Experiencing the Energy and Abundance of the Divine (New York: Bell Tower, 1998); Writings from the Heart of Jewish Renewal (Philadelphia: Aleph Publication), 2003; Shachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift.

246. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 17.

247. Schachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift, xx.

248. Bettina Knapp, Manna and Mystery (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1995), 64; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 87.

249. Ibid., 65.

250. Ibid., 64.

251. Ibid.

252. Avram Davis, ed., Meditation from the Heart of Judaism: Today’s Teachers Share Their Practices, Techniques and Faith (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999); quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 109.

253. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 111.

254. David Rosenberg, Dreams of Being Eaten Alive: The Literary Core of Kabbalah (New York: Harmony Books, 2000), 39; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 111.

255. Yitzhak Buxbaum, Jewish Tales of Mystic Joy (Danvers, MA: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 5.

256. Ibid.

257. Ibid., 178.

258. Ibid.

259. Ibid., 155.

260. Ibid.

261. Shefa Gold, “Chanting as a Healing Modality,” [article online]; http://www.rabbishefagold.com/HealingModality.html; Internet website; accessed 24 July 2011; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 111.

262. Ibid.

263. Daria Halprin, “Living Artfully: Movement as an Integrative Process,” in Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy, Stephen K. Levine and Ellen G. Levine, eds. (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999), 134.

264. Ibid., 69.

265. Hugh J. Vasquez, “La Cultura Cura,” California Prevention Network Journal, (Spring 1992): 34-39, 36.

293

266. Lawrence E. Sullivan, “Images of Wholeness: An Interview with Lawrence E. Sullivan,” interview by Ellen Draper and Virginia Baron, in The Parabola Book of Healing (New York: Continuum, 1994), 17-28; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 46.

267. Ibid., 19.

268. Ibid., 18.

269. Ibid., 18-19.

270. Ilene Serlin, “Toward An Erotic Spirituality,” in A Modern Jew In Search Of a Soul, J. Marvin Spiegelman and Abraham Jacobson, eds. (Phoenix, AZ: Falcon Press, 1986), 231-243, 231.

271. Ibid., 233.

272. Ibid., 242.

273. Ibid.

274. Ibid.

275. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” vi.

276. Ibid.

277. Ibid.

278. Ibid.

279. Ibid., 19.

280. Ibid.

281. Barbara U. Hammer, “Anti-Semitism as Trauma: A Theory of Jewish Communal Trauma Response,” in Jewish Women Speak Out: Expanding the Boundaries of Psychology, Kayla Weiner and Arinna Moon, eds. (Seattle: Canopy Press, 1995), 199-220.

282. Ibid.

283. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 205.

284. Ibid.

285. Ibid., 22.

286. Ibid., 212.

287. Ibid.

288. Ibid., 101.

289. Sanford L. Drob, Kabbalistic Visions: C.G. Jung and Jewish Mysticism (New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2010), 11.

294

290. Ibid.

291. Edward Hoffman, The Way of Splendor: Jewish Mysticism and Modern Psychology (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992), 23-24.

292. Drob, Kabbalistic Visions, 111.

293. Ibid.

294. Ibid., 112.

295. Ibid.

296. Ibid., 113.

297. Ibid., 115.

298. Ibid., 122.

299. Ibid., 117.

300. Ibid., 118.

301. Ibid., 97.

302. Ibid., 99.

303. Ibid., 101.

304. Ibid.

305. Ibid., 103.

306. Ibid., 106.

307. Ibid.

308. Howard Schwartz. “The Quest for the Lost Princess: Life-Transition and Change in Jewish Lore,” in Opening the Inner Gates: New Pathways in Kabbalah and Psychology, Edward Hoffman, ed. (Boston: Shambala, 1995), 20-46.

309. Ibid.

310. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 97.

311. Tracey R. Rich, Moshiach: The Messiah; The Messianic Idea in Judaism. [article on-line] available at http://www.jewfaq.org/moshiach.htm accessed 20 September 2011.

312. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990).

313. Ibid., x.

295

314. Ibid., xi.

315. Ibid.

316. Ibid.. xv.

317. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 92.

318. Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1967, 1978), 34-53.

319. Lynn Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1995), 20; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 93.

320. Ibid., 20-21.

321. Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish feminist theology of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 2003), 153.

322. Ibid.

323. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 226.

324. Schwartz. “The Quest for the Lost Princess,” 26; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 93.

325. Ibid.

326. Ibid.

327. Ibid.

328. Ibid., 27-29.

329. Ibid.

330. Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, 153.

331. Ibid.

332. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 56.

333. Ibid., 225.

334. Ibid.

335. Siegmud Hurwitz, Lilith The First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine (Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 1992), 32-62; quoted in Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 96.

336. Schwartz, Tree of Souls, 216.

337. Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within, 38.

296

338. Ibid.

339. Ibid.

340. Ibid.

341. Ibid., 39.

342. Sylvia Brinton Perera, Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women (Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books, 1981), 9-11.

343. Ibid., 21.

344. Ibid.

345. Ibid., 36.

346. Ellen Becker, Personal Communication with Nicola Wagenberg (Berkeley, CA: The Psychotherapy Institute, April 5, 2011).

347. Ibid.

348. Simcha Paul Raphael, “Miriam Took Her Timbrel Out and All the Women Danced: A Midrashic Motif of Contemporary Jewish Feminism,” Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 7, no. 2 (Winter 2010).

349. Ibid.

350. Ibid.

Chapter 3

1. Omer, “Dissertation Handbook, 3rd” Edition.”

Chapter 4

1. In order to protect the confidentiality of participants in this study, they are referred to by pseudonym throughout. The pseudonyms were chosen to reflect the cultural identity of the participants’ actual first name.

2. Baum, “Never to Forget,” 94.

3. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma:, 11.

4. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 205.

5. Volkas, “Healing the Wounds of History,” 170.

297

6. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 226.

7. Schwartz. “The Quest for the Lost Princess,” 26.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Kellermann, “The Long-Term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” 213.

12. Wardi, Memorial Candles, 109.

13. Volkas, “Healing the Wounds of History,” 159.

14. Ibid., 148.

15. Becker, Personal Communication with Nicola Wagenberg (Berkeley, CA: The Psychotherapy Institute, April 5, 2011).

16. Omer, Group Process II.

17. Omer, Psychology and Community Making I.

18. Omer, Group Process II.

19. Hurwitz, Lilith, 120.

20. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 220.

21. Ibid., 201.

22. Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within, 20.

23. Ibid.

24. Tamar Kadari, Rachel: Midrash and Aggadah, [article on-line] available at http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rachel-midrash-and-aggadah, accessed 10 February 2012.

25. Auerhahn and Laub, “The Primal Scene of Atrocity,” 375.

26. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 56.

27. Turner, The Ritual Process, 131.

28. Omer, Psychology and Community Making I.

29. Volkas, “Healing the Wounds of History;” Wardi, Memorial Candles.

30. Wardi, Memorial Candles, 109.

298

31. O’Connor et al., “Survivor Guilt, Submissive Behaviour and Evolutionary Theory,” 520.

32. Modell, “On Having the Right to a Life,” 328.

33. Omer, Integrative Seminar Ia.

34. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

35. Ibid.

36. Danieli, “The Heterogeneity of Postwar Adaptation in Families of Holocaust Survivors,” 119.

37. Mor, “Holocaust Messages from the Past,” 377.

38. Sullivan, “Images of Wholeness,” 17-28.

39. Knapp, Manna and Mystery, 64.

40. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 22.

41. Omer, Integrative Seminar III.

42. Levine, Poiesis, 29.

43. Ibid., 31.

44. Omer, Key Definitions Handout.

45. Serlin, “Toward An Erotic Spirituality,” 231.

46. Ibid.

47. Baranowsky et al., “PTSD Transmission,” 39.

48. Knapp, Manna and Mystery, 64.

49. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 111

50. Schachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift; Kamenetz, Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters.

51. Rosenberg, Dreams of Being Eaten Alive, 39.

52. Buxbaum, Jewish Tales of Mystic Joy, 5.

53. Gold, “Chanting as a Healing Modality.”

54. Raphael, “Miriam Took Her Timbrel Out and All the Women Danced.”

55. Levine, Poiesis; Omer, Integrative Seminar III.

56. Serlin, “Toward An Erotic Spirituality,” 231.

299

Chapter 5

1. Perera, Descent to the Goddess, 9.

2. Ibid.

3. Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within, 37.

4. Perera, Descent to the Goddess, 13.

5. Becker, Personal Communication with Nicola Wagenberg (Berkeley, CA: The Psychotherapy Institute, April 5, 2011).

6. Ibid.

7. Perera, Descent to the Goddess, 36.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 21.

10. Becker, Personal Communication with Nicola Wagenberg (Berkeley, CA: The Psychotherapy Institute, April 6, 2011).

11. Ibid.

12. Perera, Descent to the Goddess, 56.

13. Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within, 38-39.

14. Hurwitz, Lilith, 120.

15. Fershtman, “Carrying Joseph’s Bones,” 220.

16. Ibid., 201.

17. Becker, Personal Communication with Nicola Wagenberg (Berkeley, CA: The Psychotherapy Institute, April 5, 2011).

18. Ibid.

19. Raphael, “Miriam Took Her Timbrel Out and All the Women Danced.”

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid. Some of the words of this song are: “They danced with joy, They danced with grace, They danced on nimble feet, Kicked up their heels, threw back their heads, Hypnotic with the beat.”

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

300

24. Schwartz, “The Quest for the Lost Princess,” 21-46.

25. Ibid., 34.

26. Ibid., 32.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 33.

29. Ibid., 34.

30. Ibid., 103.

31. Ibid., 106.

32. Ibid., 97.