“The Grandmother Project” is an interview series adjacent to, but not directly related to, the story of my Russian grandmother. The idea was born when I started telling everyone about my podcast, and so many people said: “how interesting. I have a Russian grandmother too” (or Ukrainian, Belarusian, Latvian, Lithuanian…) Most of them were Jewish. And I thought, this is part of the story. My grandmother’s story, I am finding, is all about context: what was happening in her world, who were her friends, where was she living, what were her friends doing? The wider context: what were other people’s Russian-Ukrainian-Baltic-Jewish-or not Jewish grandmothers doing? Where are the overlaps, what’s similiar with my grandmother’s life and what is different? This is way too huge of a topic for me to really wrap my mind around, which is why I am limiting it to the mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers of my Vermont friends and neighbors. I don’t expect to come to any grand conclusion, just to gather the stories together and share them. While my grandmother’s family had their share of suffering, they did not experience pogroms or death camps like some of my friends grandparents did. And that’s part of the story too.

I met with Jules Rabin on his front porch in Marshfield Vermont on a beautiful sunny day last fall. Jules is a bread baker, anthropologist, gardener extraordinaire, and scholar. He is also the oldest person I know— almost 100. In this episode, he talks about his parents and their hard early lives, growing up Jewish in the deeply antisemitic world of Belarus and Lithuania of the late 19th century. He also talks about chicken soup, the Haskalah, laundry, bread, and so much more.

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