Sometimes the best things in life are unexpected. That notion rang true yesterday as Vera Schwarcz, a professor of East Asian studies at Wesleyan University, gave a lecture yesterday about her latest novel, Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory: Bridge Across Broken Time, and spoke about her unexpected linkage of Jewish and Chinese cultural issues. At the lecture, sponsored by Penn's Center for East Asian Studies, the Kutchin Seminars of the Jewish Studies Program and the History Department, organizers had to find extra chairs for the unexpected crowd of 70 people that showed up, many of whom were curious as to how Schwarcz was going to connect the two cultures. From the start, Schwarcz tried to dismiss any misconceptions about the relationship between the two ethnic groups. "We can start with the trivial things? like food, like education, like their mothers, like money, but Jewish and Chinese people are linked by more than this," she said. Schwarcz said that what really links Chinese and Jewish people today is their memory of the past. Both groups of people share a burden in their history that makes them understand one another without the need for words. The Chinese underwent similar hardships in the Najing Massacre as the Jews suffered in the Holocaust, she argued. Both groups have a "tenacity for memory" and an "obsession with text," Schwarcz said. "Their identity is linked with language." Schwarcz spent most of her life studying Chinese culture and history as an escape from her own heritage. She told the audience that she no longer wanted to hear about her parents' struggles in the Holocaust. But she ended up carrying with her what she wanted to run away from, as she discovered the two cultures were more similar than she thought. "It took me almost a decade before I was ready to listen," said Schwarcz. She said that while interviewing Chinese intellectuals, she "heard" her parents, explaining the similarity in their struggles. It was then that she knew she must find out about the past of the Jewish community. Schwarcz wrapped up the lecture by reading her favorite poem, "Autumn Meditations." The diverse audience said they learned a lot from the speech. "I have taken several Jewish Studies classes, but I had no idea about the commonalities between the Jewish and Chinese cultures," said College senior Rachel Jablon. "I liked that the talk was not meant to be a scholarly talk, but more of a personal exploration," said Tina Lu, a professor of Chinese, adding that Schwarcz's style made the lecture appeal to a broader audience.
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