Bonus. Jewish Safekeeping Stories (Jill Sarkozi)

Living Our Beliefs: Exploring Faith & Religion in Daily Life

Episode 36.
Jill Sarkozi, founder of the Safekeeping Stories program, talks about the mission and system of the work. Inspired by helping her father-in-law, a Holocaust survivor, write his story, Jill went on to develop the Storykeeping® method. Since founding the program in 2012, Jill and her team have helped many Jewish families capture their own family stories. The workshop provides a safe environment for these family members to explore the family’s Holocaust story, understand how it has been part of their own story, and then add their generational layer to the family story as they write observations about life with their survivor-family member.
Using a structured system of one-two page ‘slices’, children and grandchildren of survivors build up a 15-20 page history which they can use in many ways – in a slide show, as impetus for a heritage trip, and more. Helping people recover their family story and watch the reactions has often been a beautiful and moving experience.

Highlights:
· Workshops are groups of ten – for personal attention and guidance.
· The focus has mainly been Holocaust stories preserved by family members of survivors, and will remain so.
· Besides workshops, Safekeeping Stories offers speakers, programs, and a self-paced method.
· Learning one: People retain the family story from the child perspective and watching the shift to the adult view is surprising.
· Learning two: A person’s response to incredible loss, and the impact on subsequent generations positively and negatively, takes many forms.
· Learning three: A small kindness can place a tenderness in someone’s heart. It can stay with them for life and is important to honor.

Social Media links for Jill:
Website – https://safekeepingstories.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/safekeepstories/
LinkedIn (personal) – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-sarkozi-997518b/
LinkedIn (Safekeeping Stories) – https://www.linkedin.com/company/78329846/admin/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/safekeepingstories/
Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project – https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271
Transcript:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/
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