The Plate

A story that was born from an ancient plate, a plate that revived a family secret.

Once, seeking inspiration for a novel I had been writing about my Jerusalemite family, I asked Aunt Esther for her old photographs, documents, and other papers. Regrettably, I shelved the draft, but the photographs, documents, and some prose I had written kept echoing inside me, as did Aunt Esther's collection of antiques and old household items, telling me my family story.

This film was born from my aunt's ancient blue plate as it revealed and revived the dreadful family secret about grandfather who vanished under a cloud, of treason and conversion, but also of love and compassion.

This is a story drawn from memory - true, false, or imaginary recollections that I have dissevered into tiny details and put together again through scenes, mise-en-scènes, and made-up collages I created. This is not a novel - with a beginning, a middle, and an end - but shreds of (actual and imaginary) reality that together try to form some singular, semi-familial intimacy.

I am a writer with nine published novels, but now I decreed myself to wordless silence, citing only two words: “libe Lanne“ (Yiddish - darling Lenna) - which is how Grandpa called Grandma in letters he sent from Europe; and “aguna” - “woman in cuffs“, a Jewish religion term describing a woman whose husband vanished without a trace, leaving her alone and unable to marry and start a new life with another man.