As I write this, social media bombards me with 9/11 imagery as we mourn and memorialize what happened 25 years ago. Jews also have the High Holidays and then Oct. 7 to commemorate and mourn through Yizkor and memorials. The traditional Jewish fall liturgy includes a martyrology. We don’t forget the horrible losses of our people who have died over thousands of years.
Like most with social media, I see first-person narratives online. These audio clips, videos and drone shows describe events, like Sept. 11, that occurred not just in my lifetime, but to me as an adult. I’m a dual citizen (US/Canadian). I experienced that day 25 years ago not just as an outsider. I’m the relative of people who experienced this tragedy in both DC and New York City. I’m the sister-in-law of someone who ran down the street, his suit and body covered in dust and ash. He escaped the area near the Twin Towers as the second tower fell.
When we study history, it’s often presented as settled facts. This battle took place. We should memorize this treaty, signed on this date. However, as world events happen in our lives, nothing is as clear cut as it appears when written later by historians. This is why we need historical scholarship and political science analysis. We need all the humanities and social sciences that help us understand big world events through a broader spectrum than just our anecdotal retelling.
Don’t get me wrong. Anecdotes are powerful and meaningful. If recorded correctly, as primary sources, they are an essential part of information gathering. However, there’s a traditional and social media trend to make these first-person stories “the whole story.” Grounded in personal experience, these stories are emotional, traumatic and powerful to hear. They are sometimes also full of misinformation, only some facts, and even include misperceptions or conspiracy theories. We must sort through all this.
The frequent click-bait media coverage offered on the Gaza War is an example. These include headlines that suggest that every war death in Gaza or Lebanon includes women and children. If you read Israeli coverage, you can often learn the name and military standing of the individuals targeted in each manoeuvre. Do civilians die in war? Yes, they certainly do. It’s always awful. However, if a 17-year-old child soldier is killed, watch how that is described in the media. The event’s description may be skewed. The journalist might obscure details to fit their political narrative.
Oral histories are important as primary sources. They add to the account of important events. That said, social scientists have settled processes for how these histories are taken and documented as part of the historical record. The US Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem are examples of how survivors’ stories can be an effective oral history collection. Unfortunately, not all museums use proper processes. According to Jeffrey Herf, professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Nakba exhibit did not consult up-to-date sources, interpretation or oral histories properly. Herf, an author and expert, states the exhibit, which claims to document Palestinian Canadian voices, doesn’t provide a full historical picture. Instead, the CMHR skips the academic context. It fails to provide a full account of what happened in Israel in 1948. This Canadian institution relies on many layers of government funding, but this exhibit doesn’t represent (government-funded) academic research or policy.
No single historian’s analysis is perfect. Adults understand that the events we experience are complex. What appears clear cut as we experience it becomes blurred with more information. As we get farther away from the event in question, we may understand it better and contextualize it.
An example from a traditional Jewish source comes from the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Chullin, on page 133a. “Rav Yosef said: In a case where a priest has a Torah scholar living in his neighbourhood and that Torah school is hard-pressed for money, let the priest grant his gifts to him, ie, the priest may declare that those gifts he is destined to receive should be given to the poor Torah scholar.” When the rabbis were debating and discussing Jewish law, they were in a period of transition. The rabbis commenting on the Mishnah lived in an age when the Temple had been destroyed. The rabbis, as leaders and learned scholars were on the rise. Yet they recorded a transition in the Gemara in which priests were still perhaps active in their community: priests received gifts. The lines between who was in charge and who needed support were changing. The historical record indicates that the Temple has been destroyed at this point, but rabbis and priests were still living together and negotiating community boundaries as rabbinic Judaism rose in power, and the priestly system fell apart.
As individuals, we live history. We don’t always know when it’s happening while it happens. Even as we were still trying to understand what happened on Oct. 7, propaganda circled the globe to change the narrative. When Jewish children were threatened, Winnipeg police guarded schools in the city with Jewish children just days afterwards. Even though my kids were affected, I didn’t understand then that this was part of a much bigger global intifada campaign. History puts these personal experiences into perspective.
Here’s another, happier anecdote. My brother-in-law lives in Manhattan with his brilliant wife, who has a big role in the New York judicial system. They have three children. They live happy and productive lives, with a beautiful home, a congregation they like, and family and friends nearby. This anecdote refers to the same young man who, 25 years ago, escaped the collapse of the Twin Towers in a terrible terrorist attack. We rely on historical analysis, time and context to understand the bigger picture. Our brief anecdotes, a snapshot in time, can’t give us everything we need to understand a fuller picture.
As Canadians (and humans), we love a good click-bait first-person narrative. If we are to truly understand world events and commemorate important milestones, we must engage with more than this. We cannot tell stories simply through anecdotes parading as oral history documentary. Individual narratives only tell one perspective about a specific moment. Canadians deserve the whole story.
Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
