At Cal, Ana is majoring in Comparative Literature and focuses on Yiddish literature. She is also pursuing a minor in Jewish Studies.  

“The Helix Project provides an amazing opportunity for me to get in touch with my own family history while further exploring my academic interests. My great-grandparents came from different parts of Eastern Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War and I am excited to have the chance to see where they were born and grew up.  At Berkeley, I have focused on Yiddish literature and am eager to see the places I have read and studied about.”

“Growing up, I learned a lot about the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. At Berkeley, I have learned about Eastern Europe before World War II and am constantly exposed to current political news about Israel. Because I have not been exposed to the post-Holocaust story of European Jewry, I think the Helix Project will begin to fill in what has happened to the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and what they look like today.”

“I hope to share a part of Jewish history or culture that is quickly becoming lost. I believe that I can inspire others to take an interest in this integral part of Jewish history and culture. This stems from a personal interest and commitment to my own Jewish heritage, and also from a desire to educate and engage the larger Jewish community.”

Tommy moved between California and Israel before settling in San Diego in 2004. There, he worked and then attended night school at the local community colleges before he successfully transferred to UC Berkeley in 2009. Tommy has traveled throughout northwestern India and lived in the northeastern Thai jungle for several months.

“My personal, cultural, and historical identities are deeply important to me, especially as a Jew living in the diaspora. Discovering what it meant to be Jewish for the diaspora communities of Eastern Europe, before the great destruction, will help me, and others like me, further develop our Jewish identities.”

“My Jewish education has centered on the Holocaust and the State of Israel—two extremely important and contemporary events. I want an identity that complements, but does not replace, my relationship with the State of Israel. I believe the Helix Project could provide the beginning to the road of discovering and developing that identity, and I look forward to it.”

“On a personal level, I hope to be able to share with my family and friends both pictures and stories of Jewish life in Europe prior to the Holocaust. I look forward to discussing the change that Eastern European Jews have undergone due to the Holocaust, especially with my grandparents, whose families lived in Eastern Europe. On a scholarly level, I am currently interested in researching modern Jewish history. By studying and visiting the geographical space in which these communities produced thriving Jewish culture and life, my interest will be engaged and clarified.”

Tessa enjoys hiking, backpacking and painting, while always living life for the present moment. After spending two months during her junior year of high school studying in Israel, Tessa has fallen back in love with the thought of becoming a rabbi and a novelist later in life.

“I am excited to be a part of the Helix Project so that I can expand my knowledge about my family’s Jewish history, and the circumstances that frame modern Jewry today. Every period in Jewish history shapes the current perception of the world and I look forward to discovering these connections for myself.”

“I have always been interested in learning about my ancestors’ lives in Eastern Europe and the Helix provides the perfect opportunity to do so. I have heard stories about my great-grandparents’ accounts of being Jewish foreigners immigrating to America, but I have never had the opportunity to learn about the thriving culture that existed before that.”

“I hope to be able to teach others about an unfamiliar Jewish experience and to instill pride in the culture that existed in Europe. Jewish culture is not entirely linear but rather an accumulation of diverse episodes that form a collective Jewish narrative, and I think it is important to honor each one.”

Ben continued his Jewish activism in a variety of different ways throughout his time in college. He helped organize a weekly class on the Rambam at UCLA Hillel and is also a fellow with the Jewish Institute for Ideas and Ideals, which seeks to foster an intellectually open and inclusive Orthodox Judaism. Recently, he finished his senior thesis on feminist Jewish theology.

“The Helix Project is more than a capstone to my scholastic endeavors, it is about something much more intrinsic to my identity. I want to discover my intellectual heritage with the Helix Project in the former cradle of Jewish intellectual life. This is also about my commitment to find Jewish life in ‘unconventional’ places, and in so doing to discover missing pieces of who I am.”

“Europe was the center of Jewish life, but it also remains an integral part of our cultural heritage. These places we learn about and visit have stories to tell, stories overlooked in my Holocaust-oriented education in day school. I want to go back to the place of my ancestors, a place whose significance is deeply imbedded within me, and for the flowers and fruit trees that inexorably blossom in places of destruction.”

“Sometimes the most unconventional-seeming places are really not so distant—one just has to know where to look. That, I think, is ultimately what the Helix Project offers—a commitment to find life in places where others have long since stopped looking. The Holocaust must be remembered, but central to that remembrance is a celebration of that which came before and that which remains.”