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Memoir and Midrash: A Writing Workshop

Lev Shalem Institute of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation
Woodstock, NY

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5 Sundays: January 10, 24, February 7, 28, March 13 (snow date March 27) 10am-12pm

Memoir, writing based on the author's personal experience, and midrash, filling in the gaps in the Torah narrative, may not seem to have much in common. But both require the exercise of the imagination within limits. Memoir should be about things that really happened, but we never remember it all precisely. To really live on the page, the experience must be reimagined in full sensory detail. By necessity, something will be invented. Midrash invents experiences and explanations to fill gaps in the Torah narrative, but cannot contradict what the text already says. Fortunately, there are lots of gaps to fill. In either case, the writer's imagination supplies the detail.

In this workshop, participants will write in either or both forms as they choose, walking into their own pasts or into the gaps in Torah narrative to see what they discover. We will write during group sessions (as well as in between) and share the results. Don't worry if you have never done this before! After the class ends, participants will be invited to give a reading on a Friday evening at WJC.

Judith Kerman is a Jewish Buddhist Quaker clown in passionate pursuit of the Cheshire cat called Truth. She has published eight collections of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press), and three books of translations of Cuban and Dominican women's poetry and fiction (White Pine Press, BOA Editions, Mayapple Press). She was a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic in 2002. She founded Earth's Daughters magazine in Buffalo, NY (1971 to present) and runs Mayapple Press, located in Woodstock, NY. Her book of Diaspora poems, Aleph, broken, will be published in 2016 by Broadstone Media.