Keeping Memory Alive: Jewish Identity, Lyric Address, and Third Generation Poetics

Abstract

This article explores the characteristics of Jewish third-generation (post-Shoah) experiential writing through the poetry collection Under månen (2020) by author Hanna Rajs. Discussing the portrayal of Jewish identity, coupled with a specific generational situatedness, twice removed from the Shoah yet carrying the responsibility of its memory into the future, the article reveals how the lyrical subject negotiates belonging and memory on various levels: individual, familial, communal, and collective. By engaging with acts of self-positioning, the subject travels dynamically across temporal and spatial borders through memory. This, in turn, underlines the forward direction of third-generation writing as well as its outward reach, combining cultural and communicative memory and playing with lyric address. The poetry drives readers to engage with memory of the Shoah and the experience of being Jewish today as mediated through one lyrical subject's lens.