Words of the Week: Etgar Keret

Gigi’s mom had once told him that when she was a little girl in the ghetto, a hunched old man named Max came up to her before one of the roundups, and said his whole family had already perished and he knew his time was up. He asked Gigi’s mother to look at him and remember all his features. Gigi’s mother scrutinized the old man, trying to memorize every single wrinkle on his face. Max was very grateful: “No matter whether you’re dead or alive,” he said, stroking her hair, “as long as someone remembers you, you exist.” The Nazis put Max on a train that same day, and for the rest of her life, Gigi’s mother thought about him every single day. She told Gigi that in her most difficult and frightening moments during the war, she knew she had to survive, because if she died, no one would be left to remember the hunched old man, and he would cease to exist.

Etgar Keret, “As Long as Someone Remembers You” (trans. Jessica Cohen)

Finds for Writers

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Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.

On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”

The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

Screenshot of text published beneath "Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Text taken from the website linked within the post.
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