Celebrating the women
Stories of Jewish Vermont women at the Brick Box
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Ann Buffum (left) and Sandra Gartner set up an exhibit, “To Life: A Celebration of Vermont Jewish Women,” in the Brick Box on Center Street in Rutland. The poster they are hanging is of Rutland’s June Salander who is now 101 years old. Albert J. Marro / Rutland Herald |
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By Cristina Kumka Staff Writer - Published: October 8, 2009
A writer, a mother, a researcher and a young girl stood in the gallery at the Brick Box in Rutland — their characteristics and personal experiences as diverse as the exhibit forming around them.
All the women worked together to hang posters Tuesday as the young girl's eyes steadied on the powerful images and stories unfolding around her, open for public viewing today.
There's the life and times of Semah Unterman, an anti-Nazi protester from Brooklyn turned Springfield Elementary School principal living in Belmont.
Judith Chalmer, a writing teacher at Vermont Technical College, didn't grow up with her father, according her posted biography.
Chalmer's dad died when she was a year old after he escaped from a concentration camp in Germany, enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent back to the country, only to find his long-lost family members alive.
Rutland's June Salander went from Jewish baker to the eldest woman in the city to celebrate her bat mitzvah at the age of 89.
There's a rabbi's wife, a sports bra designer, a pottery maker and a family doctor.
"To Life! A Celebration of Vermont Jewish Women" is the culmination of five years of research and interviews with 20 Jewish Vermont women.
The project's directors are some of those women, although choosing to keep their stories behind the scenes.
"I have always, as a writer, wanted to know people's stories," said project director and creator Sandra Gartner, "what their lives are like beyond the moment I see them."
Co-director Ann Buffum said photos of Anne Frank she saw at the age of 12 reminded her of her mother and how lucky she was not to have the same fate.
"From there on I had a passion about Jewish history," Buffum said.
The exhibit is the new and old history of these Vermont women, shown for the first time in words and images.
It took Buffum and Gartner half a decade to tape the interviews and organize the women's lives on paperboard and in presentations based on their own words.
The project is formally called DAVAR: The Vermont Jewish Women's History Project and it started in 2004 after Buffum discovered there was little on women's history in Vermont, let alone their religious backgrounds.
The only Jewish and female Vermonter in the prominent Jewish Women's Archive based in Brookline, Mass., is former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin.
"There had to be more," Buffum said.
The women DAVAR depicted didn't have to be born in Vermont or born Jewish — but they all had to willing to tell their life's story and make history doing it.
Each interview will be archived in Middlebury's Vermont Folklife Center and, hopefully, the Massachusetts archive, according to Buffum.
The purpose of the public exhibit in Rutland, according to the creators, is to allow people to make a personal connection to the women's stories and rediscover the common threads all people have.
"What we hope is that the general public will say, 'Wow! What a diverse group of women there are in Vermont,'" Buffum said.
"To Life! A Celebration of Vermont Jewish Women" is funded by the creators, a grant from the Vermont Humanities Council, the Aviva Spring Foundation and Damon and Marilee Buffum.
Karen Pike is the photographer and Jane Krate Duda of Roaring Brook Design in Wallingford designed and edited the exhibit and book.
The free exhibit's opening reception is from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday and be open daily today through Nov. 8 at the Brick Box, 30 Center St. in Rutland.
Dr. Penina Glazer of Hampshire College will discuss the women's stories in the context of American and Jewish history at 3 p.m. on opening day.
Other presenters are scheduled for Oct. 14, 18 and 25. For a complete listing and more details, go to www.davarvt.org or call Buffum at 446-2877 or Gartner at 353-0001.
Books of the exhibit's content will be sold at the month-long public exhibition for $15.
cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com
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