Bonus. Jewish Safekeeping Stories (Jill Sarkozi)

Episode 36. 
Jill Sarkozi, founder of the Safekeeping Stories program, talks about the mission and system of the work. Inspired by helping her father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, write his story, Jill went on to develop the Storykeeping® method. Since founding the program in 2012, Jill and her team have helped many Jewish families capture their own family stories. The workshop provides a safe environment for these family members to explore the family’s Holocaust story, understand how it has been part of their own story, and then add their generational layer to the family story as they write observations about life with their survivor-family member. 

Using a structured system of one-two page ‘slices’, children and grandchildren of survivors build up a 15-20 page history which they can use in many ways – in a slide show, as impetus for a heritage trip, and more. Helping people recover their family story and watch the reactions has often been a beautiful and moving experience. 

 
Highlights:
·       Workshops are groups of ten – for personal attention and guidance. 
·       The focus has mainly been Holocaust stories preserved by  family members of survivors, and will remain so. 
·       Besides workshops, Safekeeping Stories offers speakers, programs, and a self-paced method.
·       Learning one: People retain the family story from the child perspective and watching the shift to the adult view is surprising.
·       Learning two: A person’s response to incredible loss, and the impact on subsequent generations positively and negatively, takes many forms.
·       Learning three: A small kindness can place a tenderness in someone’s heart. It can stay with them for life and is important to honor.  

Social Media links for Jill:
Website –  https://safekeepingstories.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/safekeepstories/
LinkedIn (personal) – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-sarkozi-997518b/
LinkedIn (Safekeeping Stories) – https://www.linkedin.com/company/78329846/admin/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/safekeepingstories/

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project –  https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271

Transcript:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/

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Transcript

Jill Sarkozi transcript
Safekeeping Stories

[Music]

INTRODUCTION:

Méli:  Hello and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life – at work, at home, in the community, in good times and in bad.  There is no one-size-fits-all ‘right’ answer, just a way to move forward for you, for here, for now.  I am your host Méli Solomon.  So glad you could join us.  

[Music]

Méli:  This is episode thirty-six and is a Bonus episode, where we focus on a topic rather than a personal faith path.  Today’s focus is the Safekeeping Stories program and its founder, Jill Sarkozi has joined me to talk about this important work. Inspired by helping her father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, tell his story, Jill created her Storykeeping method.  Over the years, she has developed a range of services including speakers, one-day programs, and Storykeeping workshops for organizations and individuals. Through the program, Jill and her team help children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors preserve those important family stories. Jill has degrees in finance and law from Tulane University, as well as certificates in Applied Positive Psychology, and genealogy. She lives north of New York city with her family. A link to Jill’s social media handles are listed in the show notes. 

Méli:  Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm so pleased to have you on today. 

Jill:  Thank you so much for having me. 

Méli:  This is a bonus episode, and as such we are focusing on a topic rather than a personal story, but I would like to start with my usual first question. What is your religious and cultural identity? 

IDENTITY & CONVERSION:

Jill:  I'm a Jew-by-choice. I was raised as a cultural Christian in the South. My family didn't belong to any particular church, but we we did attend many, and I would say I was somewhat of a searcher for most of my life. My parents divorced when I was young. And I think that really put me on that path of kind of looking for belonging. And when we moved to Tennessee after my parents divorced, you know, you'd be asked: ‘what church do you belong to?’ And I didn't really have an answer for that. And so the sense of, you know, wanting to belong was with me for a very long time. Fast forward. I moved to New York. I married a Jewish man, embarked on a study of Judaism. I've read the Torah. I read the New Testament. You know, we were gonna raise our children Jewish, and eventually that's where I found my home and a very deep sense of belonging. 

Méli:  Thank you for bringing up this point of belonging. We do all need a sense of belonging. I hear that maybe as a result of your childhood, the moving around, the divorce, all that you were seeking a belonging and and you have found it as an adult. 

Jill:  Absolutely. And I think the divorce was actually a really important piece because my parents were more forward-looking, new marriages, you know, new new life. And honestly it was when I was in my 40s and living in a small town in New York, which by the way when I first moved there, 30-something years ago, no Internet. You know, that feeling of belonging – you know such a difference between North and South – you know there's still is, but even more so then. Eventually I learned that not only was my great grandfather Jewish, but that my grandparents lived in the very town I was living it, and so you want to talk about belonging. That was profound for me. I really felt like here I was right where I was supposed to be. It was amazing how much knowing that about my family's past, my ancestors, could be so meaningful. That's my whole life background. That pretty much led me to where I am. 

Méli:  Alright. Well, let's turn to our focus today, the Safekeeping Stories. What is it and when was it founded? 

SAFEKEEPING STORIES:

Jill:  It was founded in 2012. Safekeeping Stories helps people write a short and sharable story about their family's history. We primarily focus on recent ancestors – that being parents, grandparents, great grandparents, those are the primary focus of the stories. It's next generation storytelling. We offer workshops that we do a lot for organizations as well as on our website and we provide resources for free on the website that. Anyone can use to to help them be guided and in doing this work for their family. 

Méli:  What was the inspiration for starting this program? 

Jill:  Couple of things. First, my own experience feeling the power of knowing about your past. Feeling that sense of roots. Feeling that sense of belonging and connection to something bigger than yourself. And knowing the power of that for your life and well-being. Also my father-in-law, sitting next to him through the years and slowly but surely telling me about his experiences in World War Two during the Holocaust. It was an incredible story. I couldn't believe it. As is often the case with Holocaust survivors, they don't really talk a lot about it with their children out of a sense of not wanting to burden them with things from the past. I guess it was a safe place to talk to me, and I encouraged him to write it all down and helped him through that process. And that was a profound experience for me to have him, and he did it, and he made it into a little book and gave it to all of us and spoke about it only a few times at my – I have four children – and spoke at their schools, told the story and he said: ‘I'm doing it for them. That's it.’ It was hard. But also powerful and actually after that we had many conversations about the past and we all even went to his hometown with him and Hungary and took that trip together. So it really began a really meaningful family journey into his story and my husband who hadn't really thought about the impact of that on his life. 

Méli:  And then you carried it much farther, much farther beyond your father-in-law story. You could have left it there, but you didn't. It then developed into the Safekeeping Stories. So I'm I'm curious about. Why you took it further. What what inspired you to take it further beyond your own family? 

Jill:  Well, I think part of it was, how do these stories get handed down? You're either lucky enough to be around where somebody happens to be telling you, or you grab it piecemeal as you're living your life, or you do something intentional and give it the time that it needs and create something tangible out of all this intangible stuff. And so I embarked on a process of how do you do that? I studied it. I really was putting together a method for doing it because they're sort of like, how are you as a writer? How do you find the words? What is the process for making something that's gonna not only tell the facts, but gives some meaning and is also going to be in a format that somebody's going to want to read? Working on all of that, doing for myself as part of that process and helping some other people. Then I ended up doing a project for the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center. It was an organization founded by Holocaust survivors who were going in schools and teaching and telling stories, and they really were thinking long term and what about the next generation. So it was a workshop that was done throughout Westchester County where children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – it was actually an 18 week program. And I'll tell you, people didn't miss a session. They didn't miss a session. And they came in. And they we did the process of creating their story and what I call slices, which are really short narratives of just one to two pages tops. It's actually a firm limit. Each week they write a different slice of the story. We did that for several weeks and then part of that workshop was also once you finish the story telling it aloud, learning how to become a speaker. I did that for several years and it was incredibly meaningful to me, and I've carried it forward, doing it for other organizations, doing the workshop online. People who took the program trained to become teachers and facilitators of that program. So it's been a really meaningful journey for me. 

Méli:  And clearly meaningful for the families and individuals who participate either in an organization or just as families. 

Jill:  Absolutely. And it's different for everybody. Some people had parents who never spoke. Some people had parents who spoke all the time about it, and it was too much. A variety of different experiences. But yet there is also a commonality of a similar background, that when people come together in this workshop, they really feel a sense of belonging. They feel, they feel connected like that they're with people who really get them and it's very structured program, so it's not a free form. People write these slices. We share a few each week. It's really a profoundly meaningful connection that happens there. So yeah, it's been amazing to see that journey of our participants. Grow up that story for themselves. Take it out. Look at it with adult eyes. Decide the words they want to use to tell it to their children and to themselves. 

Méli:  One of the things that I wonder about in hearing this, Jill, is this is really difficult history for Jews to talk about the Holocaust. The loss and the survival and part of that is trauma. So how do you deal with that, really It's a psychological aspect. How do you deal with that psychological aspect? 

FAMILY HISTORY:

Jill:  First of all, I just want to say that, you know, people throughout human history have written letters, have written in journals, have used writing as a tool to understand life. I do feel that that is a very powerful experience for people to use pen and paper and even computer. We do use both but to access those words for themselves. But yes this can be extremely painful for people. We do include mindful self-compassion or, I I call it kindness, as part of this program. A lot of this program is based on the psychology of well-being. I did study that and bring the tools from the psychology of well-being into this program. One of them is mindful self-compassion, which is really just naming feelings. Allowing them and comforting yourself in the face of those feelings, knowing you're connected to other people who are also feeling this pain, I think that that has been a helpful tool to give people as they try and deal with the painful parts of their story. And I also think that hearing others, as they talk about it, is very healing. Finally, you know, I try and teach people what I know about narratives, and what we know is that the most healthy narrative is what's called the oscillating narrative. So back up. There's an ascending narrative where generationally things just keep getting better and better. Grandfather did this. Your mother did this and you know. But things can ascend forever. There's ups and downs in life, right? The the descending narrative would be the opposite. This bad thing happened and everything went down from there. So the oscillating is, hey, we've had, we have this terrible thing happened in our family, it's terrible and tell that story of what happened then. But we also reach back before the war and we talk about what was life back then. And maybe it's the first time people have even really tried to think about that. It can be challenging at times because they may not know a lot. That could do a little research. We can access a few things. You don't need that much to put together a little something about that background. Then they're connected all the way back there. We also talk about what happened after the war, the post-War period, in that we see amazing things that have happened to people who came out of this horrific experience. If nothing else came to a new country, had children, they started a family and many people did all different kinds of things. Amazing things. That second survival is what the kids and grandkids have witnessed and seen, and to be able to tell that long multigenerational story. And honestly, about 10 to 15 pages, it's pretty amazing, you know? 

Méli:  Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for noting the different trajectories of the history. That really makes sense and that's a helpful framework to have. Do you find that people who participate are inspired to take trips to? As we say, the old country or to do genealogy research? 

Jill:  Yes. And I I just want to say I've taken a lot of genealogy. I know about genealogy, but it's not really part of my program. That being said, I have a database of resources for research that, you know, encourage people to do on their own. A lot of people do take those trips. I wouldn't say that everybody does. It depends on the family. A lot of people have come to write this story and they've already taken that trip, and I think writing the story of that trip is actually very important. Another thing that people are often interested in doing, and they have strong feelings about this is. Reapplying for citizenship, a lot of people have between Poland and Austria, Germany, and someone was just telling me the other day, Hungary, which is where our family is from. It's different for every country, but some people it's very important to them to reclaim that. Actually some people say I would never want to do that. So it's interesting to see the different ways in which people really want to engage with their family’s homeland. Oftentimes it's it was for hundreds of years, you know? 

Méli:  Yeah. And that is the value of delving into a family history is you get the longer trajectory and you see yourself differently. And it totally makes sense that families would and individuals would respond differently to that. 

Jill:  And I also just want to say, I think really what they do is they repair that sense of roots for themselves. You know, they really reconnect. Because it really was torn and lost by that war. Obviously I'm not saying it's the same, but it is something that they can get to their children and start continually building through time again. 

Méli:  Yeah, I'm hearing a rebuilding and a healing in this process. 

Jill:  Yes. That's right. 

Méli:  Truly valuable. To switch to the more operational side of things. So that I and the audience understands, you know how this works. You've spoken of workshops. I imagine given COVID primarily remotely. 

Jill:  Hmm.

Méli:  And then also families working just on their own, it sounds like. You've spoken of the slices, these writing, these whole series of short narratives. You mentioned both handwriting and computer, so could you talk about kind of just the practical process a bit more? 

THE WRITING PROCESS:

Jill:  Sure. So before you're going to embark on any kind of a writing project, you have to think about yourself as a writer. And there's not a one-size-fits-all way to do that. So part of what we do is we guide people. When should you be doing this work? Where should you be doing this work? Those things matter a lot. We give some advice based on things that we know and then we talk a bit. The goal is for the person to find their own process and to understand what environment, what conditions really create the the best for them. We focus on why you write. Why? Why are you doing this? What's important here? Because I think the biggest thing people suffer from when they try and do this is overwhelmed. You're so close. It's so much. Where do you start? What do you do? So trying to keep things in a top level, important place. We do have a process for that, focusing on the why and a lens to keep people zeroed in on that, what matters to them and why they're doing it. And then I think is finding the entry point. We usually begin with an entry point of something tangible. Because like I said, you are taking something that's just amorphous out here. How do we enter this so an object, a place? Food. Food is always a good one. And just within that one thing, if you start talking about why does this matter to our family? What is important about this, and you're limited in space, of which you can talk about that. Suddenly you realize just this one thing actually can describe so much about what you are now. We've got what I call some ‘clay on the wheel’. Now we've got something we're working with here. And so from there you are guided each week with a different focus to create a slice which – it is different for every person – and that process is honored. You know, what feels easiest for you to write about this week. We also provide awareness tools. Awareness tools about bringing emotion to the story, giving people word lists, ways in which they can identify those words that describe those feelings and put them in sensory words. We encourage that. Guide that in various places. And we also use the VI, a character strengths research. That is something that comes out of the psychology of well-being – Martin Seligman from UPenn's work – where they, so much study on what goes wrong in people's lives that they were focused on, well, what goes. Right. And how can we study that? It's a recent thing. People have been studied. It's amazing. But the character strengths team of researchers got together and said, let's, let's study all religions, all cultures, all everything, and let's see if we can find what overlaps. Is there a commonality that people value in terms of, you know, strengths and things like temperance and humanity and love. And yes, there are. There's 24 of them that they identified and they actually, if you go to their website, it's the biainstitute.org, they have a free survey that you can fill out and find your top character strengths. And you have them all. But the idea is you'll you'll look at that list as it comes out and the ones at the top, you'll be like yeah, those really kind of describe me. Love of learning or appreciation of beauty and excellence or gratitude. I call this the language of character. And so when we're we're we're trying to capture these stories we we start with what are our inherited stories? Who have we become by being in our family? And what does this mean for the future? What does it mean for our kids? What's this about? Some of those things can be very difficult for people to access the words. And so these various tools help them. And as you see the stories come out you you're not only telling what happened, but you're really describing a family culture and identity. We've got a whole session devoted to some of that at the end, writing the beginning and ending to the story that they created and finding that these are some of the the tools we used to help them. 

Méli:  Yeah, it sounds like a really functional but also inspirational process and structure. 

Jill:  Yeah, it is structured and it is a process. 

Méli:  And it needs to be. It needs to be. As you say, you begin with this really overwhelming big story, perhaps with some mystery, perhaps with some difficult bits. And you want to try to get your arms around it. 

Jill:  Yeah. So you need to process and you need a structure. 

Méli:  Sure. And in the end. What does the family have? 

WORKSHOP OUTCOMES:

Jill:  So when they finish one of our workshops they would have a 10 to 15 page story. From there a variety of things that they can do with that. There's so many publishing sites online. We don't really guide them to pick out pictures and things like that, but often people will have some pictures. Maybe some digital documents and other things and they can put it together in a hard bound book. Some people will put it together in a PowerPoint and go on Zoom and share it with an extended family and because it'll only take you between 20 and 30 minutes to read and share that, you know there's time you could schedule an hour with your family. And people have done that, especially during the pandemic worldwide, even with family all over the place. And here they are, telling the story people had never heard before. Amazing. And you can share that. You can e-mail it, you can, you know, any way that you would like to provide it to your family. From there you've got, it's easy once you write it for yourself to then you can adapt it to share and community. You can share it in schools or teaching like the people from our workshops we're doing. So there's a variety of different outcomes, and of course there's also living it. People start taking actions. They might get involved with an organization that's meaningful, have a class where people adopt children because somebody adopted their parents and took care of them, and that has become a value for them. It's. It's really inspiring. Kathy Saltus is a person who's a jeweler who took the class, and she created this sunflower necklace that I'm wearing, and she donates the proceeds to the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center. So many different outcomes, almost as unique as each story. 

Méli:  I want to get a sense of the scale of this. So since it's founding, do you have a general sense of how many people have participated or how many families? How do you think about the scale? 

SAFEKEEPING STORIES PROGRAM:

Jill:  Well, for one thing, this is a very small program. What I mean by that is it's a small group program. There is a lot of personal interaction when people are writing their slices each week. The facilitator, whether it's me or one of the other ones, we give personal feedback to each person on their story each week. And not only that, but when they come into the workshop space, a group of 10 – I always say a minyan. There's a lot of wisdom in a minyan. So you know, no more than 10 people and we'll have a few that will share each week their slice and that process of hearing somebody else's story informs you as you're writing yours. So to me it's very important that those groups maintain their integrity. I'm not looking for this to be 100 people seminars. I think it would really lose something with that. I do like working with organizations because I think when we run these smaller group programs and we can run multiple of them for an organization. The people have that connection to the organization and through the community and because it's such a meaningful connected process, I feel I'm forming something larger there, facilitating that. I think the way I can reach the most people is through the resources I'm providing on my website. I'm not going to be able to have everybody in a workshop unfortunately, but I do have self-guided tools and an e-mail course that someone could sign up for and be guided to do this at home and maybe with some friends. I would say that the goal of providing as many resources as possible to as many people as possible is coming through the website and the in-person experiences are intimate and small and will stay that way. 

Méli:  Yeah, no. And it totally makes sense that you would want to keep it small. These are intimate and very personal experiences. All of what we've spoken of, Jill, is about Jewish families dealing with the Holocaust. Has that been the focus? That was certainly the, your initial inspiration. Has that been the focus and the audience throughout the history of the Safekeeping Stories program? 

Jill:  I have had other people that. I have worked with through time and other organizations that are not Jewish organizations and have done family Storykeeping workshop, which I call it that. And also the people who took the Holocaust workshop came to me and said: ‘we've got other stories in our family, you know’. And I think that's actually really important, that they broaden that lens and tell all of them because that's what they're about. So I'm happy to have that option available for everybody, actually. I do find that a lot of the people who come through the regular family workshop as well, a lot of Jews do tend to do this. It is a value generation to generation, telling the stories. The connection to grandparents and parents is a very important part of the Jewish tradition, so. Yeah, absolutely. 

Méli:  I find myself thinking about the large number of immigrants and refugees. Worldwide, we're currently in a, in a deluge – really the largest since World War Two – of people needing to flee their homes, and in a generation this program would be wonderful for them as well. What whatever their home country is and wherever they're going, it doesn't really matter. It's that process of dislocation and knitting the family back together and holding that story and understanding the story would be valuable. So- 

Jill:  Absolutely. 

Méli:  There's a bright future for this Safekeeping Stories program. 

Jill:  Yes, I agree there are many different groups of people who could benefit from being able to stay connected to those roots. 

Méli:  That's something that came to my mind. But is that sort of growth part of what you're interested in? When you look at the next three to five years of the program, where are you hoping to grow this? 

Jill:  I do think the Holocaust class right now is a very important program because we are at this juncture where most of the survivors have either passed away or are in their 90s. And so I think it's really an important time for people's next generation to capture those stories and that. This is a significant focus of mine. I think it's very important. That being said, there are many different avenues I can see that it would be applicable, but there's a limit of my abilities and time and energy and and so I am not, for the next three years at least, seeking to create new, you know, outside of that space that – I don't know what could happen, you know? 

Méli:  What are some lessons you've learned from this experience? 

Jill:  One of the things that I think that I've learned is that most people are carrying the story of their family around inside of them as a child really, and a lot of people haven't really taken it out and talked about it with their current state of mind as, not a child but a mother and perhaps grandmother. When they do that, the power of that for them has been surprising for me to witness. I see them go from being a child who may be fearful about some of the things about the story. To an adult who can hold that, I think that's one of the reasons people often say it's been a life changing experience for them to tell us. So I didn't expect that as much. I think the other piece is it's just been so inspiring to see how different people have reacted in the face of illnesses, loss of everything and everybody in their life and how they have created incredible lives after incredible loss and how that has impacted the next generation and both painful and positive ways. You're holding a lot there. We use the word ‘capital And’ a lot of times. Things will have both the pain and the beauty, you know, and I see a lot of that in people's stories. I've also been surprised to see how the smallest kindness can last within somebody a tenderness. When you're a child, your favorite soup being made on a holiday, those things are actually really important, and they stay with people their whole life. And I think it's impacted me as a mother recognizing things that I do as I create holidays and how important those are, dropping everything when somebody needs you. It's important actually. And family experiences that maybe you plan for over a long period of time, like one of these heritage trips, for example. It's a peak life experience, you know? And so now I think I perceive things more that way as I'm experiencing them than I probably would. 

Méli:  Yeah, wonderful. So you're in the experience, but you're also seeing it from a distance, in a way clearly that that enriches your experience, both in the moment and then the memories of the experience. 

Jill:  As I'm listening and providing feedback on stories, I'm I'm always trying to do it through the lens of some of the things I learned from the psychology of well-being. PERMA is what they call it. What it's these aspects that if you have one of them. It can lead to well-being – Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning and Accomplishment. And so, for example, if I am reading someone's story and you know, I can see maybe they always have a Friday night dinner together. Uh, multi-generationally there, the relationship caring for an aging parent, that connection, that life, focus on those relationships that it could be work. Through building a business, through a helping profession or you help other people. It could be accomplishment, learning a language and. Surviving all of losing everything and coming and rebuilding and building community, building a family and having financial security. There's a variety of different ways that it can fit within this and I think I look for that and try and reflect that back to people to see that these are things that are bringing well-being to your family. These are good. These are important. People are doing a lot of things right. Actually, I see that all the time, and amidst hardship. Everybody's got it. Every family has their own particular flavor of pain. Everybody's got it. You can't be in a family without pain. People die. You lose people. It's just part of – that's the way it is. So everyone struggles. Yet how do you, how do you move forward? How do you live? What are your choices? We have agency.

CLOSING:

Méli:  Well, that is a wonderful note to end on. Thank you so much Jill for coming on my Living Our Beliefs podcast and speaking about the Safekeeping Stories program. I will add the relevant links in the show notes so people can check that out and get in touch if they feel so moved.

Jill:  Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor to be here.  

Méli:  My pleasure.

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Méli:  Thank you for listening.  If you’d like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the SUBSCRIBE button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be directly sent to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options, go to my website – www.talkingwithgodproject.org.  Thank you so much.  Till next time.  Bye bye. 

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