04 - Stone Mother, Part One

Island Idylls

Everybody has a story, but most people don’t write them down. Barry did! In his memoir, Stone Mother, Barry shares what he remembers about his early years. A family that escaped persecution in Poland. Growing up poor. Being alone. Being Jewish. Escaping New York. In this episode, Aaron asks his father to define a memoir. Why doesn’t his memoir read like a novel? Does it matter? They move on to discuss why his family preferred not to discuss the Old Country they left behind to settle in America and how Barry came to be shaped by the Holocaust (he prefers the Hebrew term, shoah). We meet Barry’s father, known as Zeyde, a man of deep, Jewish faith deeply respected by children and neighbors alike. We also meet Ephrain, Barry’s father, a kind but indifferent man. We only briefly meet Barry’s mother--the person who shaped him the most. It’s a conversation about family history, but it’s also a window into the thoughts of an immigrant, a Jewish-American, navigating life in the New World.