Writing Jewish Memoir
Memory, Inheritance and the Stories We Carry
with author Shira Nayman
4 Thursdays from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m. ET, Aug. 27 - Sept. 17
(And recorded)
So many of us carry stories within that are related to our Jewishness, whatever that may personally mean — and so few of us get them down on the page.
Memories echo from recollections of lived experience: a grandmother’s voice, a yearning towards something unknown, shadows and secrets from within our families or from the depths of history, stories transmitted across generations, or silences we carry as emotional weight.
In this new online class from master writer Shira Nayman and My Jewish Learning, writers at every level will be encouraged to explore their various realms of Jewish experience through the written word.
Whether you are beginning to write for the first time or returning to a project in progress, this course offers craft instruction, historical context, and literary community to help you find your story — and tell it with honesty, precision, and depth.
Each one-hour class (more info on them below) will focus on craft teaching, leaving some time for discussion, and will include specific, writing prompts designed to help you navigate your memoir writing on your own. (Note: These is not a small group class and will not include workshopping of your work in the group setting.) No prior experience in a course like this is necessary.
So let's dive into our Jewish stories together!
This class was made possible in part by the generous support of the Birthright Israel Foundation.
There are no refunds for this class. By registering, you'll also begin receiving an events email each Sunday from My Jewish Learning featuring free and paid classes and events offered by our 70 Faces Media brands.
About Your Teacher
Shira Nayman is an award-winning author, creative writing teacher and psychologist living in New York. She is the author of multiple novels and short story collections, including "Awake in the Dark," "The Listener" and "Mind of Winter," and a memoir titled "Shoreline." She has published fiction and memoir in a variety of literary journals and newspapers, including The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, Tablet Magazine, The New England Review, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought and Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose. The winner of several grants from the likes of the MacDowell organization, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute and the Australia Council for the Arts Literary Board, Nayman also holds a Psy.D from Rutgers University and explores themes of intergenerational Jewish trauma in her many works.
What You'll Explore
Session 1: Memory, Inheritance, and the Jewish Imagination
What makes memoir different from autobiography? How does Jewish identity shape the way we carry and transmit stories? We begin with the building blocks of the form: memory as fragment, the inherited narratives of family life, and the craft of voice and detail.
Session 2: Family, Scene and the Drama of Memory
Families are theaters. In this session, we move from summary into scene: how to dramatize rather than describe, how to render the family table as a space of ritual and revelation, how to write dialogue that carries emotional truth. We examine the roles families assign, and how memoir can investigate and unsettle them.
Session 3: Silence, Secrets and the Ethics of Telling
Memoir is ethically complicated. Our lives are entangled with others. This session takes seriously the questions that serious memoir cannot avoid: Who owns a story? How do we write about people we love, resent, or cannot fully understand?
Session 4: Legacy, Meaning and Writing Toward the Future
Jewish tradition is concerned not only with preserving facts, but with transmitting meaning. In our final session, we turn to structure and shape, to the Jewish tradition of commentary and reinterpretation, and to the deepest questions memoir asks: What world has disappeared but still lives inside you? What do you want remembered that no document could preserve?
This course is for you if...
- You have stories related to Jewishness and you want to find a way into them on the page
- You have always meant to write about your life but haven't known where to begin
- You are an experienced writer looking to deepen your relationship with memoir as a form
- You want to leave something behind for your children, your community, yourself
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You are drawn to the intersection of personal writing and Jewish history, culture, and tradition
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About My Jewish Learning
My Jewish Learning is the internet's leading pluralistic Jewish education resource. We offer thousands of articles, videos, live classes and other resources to help you navigate all aspects of Judaism and Jewish life — from Jewish ritual and practice to texts to history and culture.
My Jewish Learning is geared toward all backgrounds and levels of knowledge and is a part of 70 Faces Media, the largest Jewish digital media organization in North America.