by Remi Welbel

In Fall of 2022, I was one of fourteen Middlebury College students who signed up for Professor Lana Povitz’s “Jewish Oral History” course. Together, we gathered every Wednesday night to learn bits of Jewish history and tradition merged with the complex practice of conducting oral history. Though this essential learning paved the way for the Jewish oral histories we conducted, the crux of our course was community—both the community we built as a class, and the community of Kolot Chayeinu. As we delved into Jewish texts, learned about the Kolot Chayeinu community, and engaged in riveting discussions about the meaning of memory and storytelling, I found that oral history and the Jewish tradition of midrash are, in many ways, one of the same. 

Oral history and Oral Torah intersect in their preservation, and continual reconstruction, of collective memory. In the The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Aviva Zornberg reflects on midrash as a narrative tool “to renegotiate the sense of total presence and fullness that the self craves.” Zornberg insists on the concept of renegotiation due the ethereal and ever changing nature of memory. And Oral Torah, at its core and foundation, is memory. Prior to being committed to physical text, it was the interpretations of laws and biblical stories that were remembered and passed down to each generation, constantly being modified and reshaped in the process. Finding deeper meaning in narrative and the plastic nature of memory feel deeply intertwined. 

We create and continually pull meaning from the Jewish collective memory. This especially holds true on a communal level in which we actively construct our identity through the “memories” etched in the Torah and Talmudic texts, and through the near and distant memories that have shaped our history as a people. When we read the same Torah portion at the same time each Jewish year, it is as if we are reproducing and finding new meaning in an ancient “memory,” and in doing so, we are able to bring in our own personal memories and reflections and bring greater fullness to it. 

From learning about oral history, to conducting interviews, to transcribing, and finally to sharing the incredible stories of Kolot community members—I found that these sentiments on midrash and memory speak volumes to oral history, and especially this oral history project on Kolot Chayeinu. As I listened to my peers’ interviews, I kept finding intertwining stories, or stories that reflected various iterations of one another. The jury is still out whether the first meeting at Rabbi Ellen’s house took place at the kitchen or dining room table. In compiling this archive, it feels like we are compiling this rich Midrashic text on the “oral Torah” of Kolot itself. The “midrashim” are the anecdotes that individuals share, as well as interpretations of events, often challenging ones, that have sparked dialogue and action. The midrashim differ greatly from one another, whether it is the interpretation of the “founding story of Kolot” or the interpretation of how “open” the community feels and to whom it feels particularly “open” to or not. 

The beauty of midrash itself is that it is a dialogue. Midrash is not a by-the-letter sort of text. It is an invitation. We came to this project with several goals in mind, community building, talking about challenges the community has faced and continues to face, and the growth of the community. Now, the growing oral history archive can act as an invitation. We can have midrashim about the midrashim of the stories—just as we have midrashes about even the most famous midrashic texts (i.e. those from the famous Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, “Rashi”). And the beauty is that this oral history tradition of Judaism gets to persist for Kolot in this very Jewish way. We get to have “oral Torah” through community building and storytelling. 

Although oral history is beautiful, as is oral Torah, neither are without its challenges. We spent almost an entire three-hour-long class talking about communication styles. We covered the whiteboards with communication styles that we loved, that made us feel held, and that brought smiles to people’s faces as they told me what to write on the board. We also covered the whiteboards with communication styles we did not feel so warmly towards—communication styles that “shut us down,” that frustrated us, that made us feel unheard. This class did not cover the readings. But, it was one of the most beneficial classes of the semester. Not only for our projects, but for our lives more broadly.

Our “listening party,” at which my peers and I shared pieces of the oral histories we conducted, felt like an incredible culmination of our work—photographs of groups of students driving from Middlebury to Brooklyn, deeply heartfelt introductions of ourselves and our narrators, the stream of woven stories, and the outflow of adoring comments from Kolot community members said it all. I don’t think many of us knew what we were getting into when we signed up for this class. But, something drew each of us, and it pulled us hard enough that we said, “yes, I am going to take a three-hour night class every Wednesday and I’m going to be brave enough to interview people I’ve never met before.” I think there are many common threads and values that tie together our small community and that tie us together with the Kolot community.