To the Ghosts Who Are Still Living

The stories of our ancestors call to us all from across time, asking to be remembered. In retelling our ancestors’ experiences of love, tradition, loss, and sorrow, we not only honor their lives, but we come to better understand our own.

In this collection of remarkable essays, Ami Lev Weintraub guides us on a journey to meet the ghosts of his Jewish ancestors—a people whose struggles and stories sometimes whisper and sometimes scream to be shared. Ami examines challenging questions of heartbreak, memory, restitution, and self-discovery. From Eastern Europe to the Tree of Life shooting, these stories illuminate the historical and contemporary impact of facism on Jewish communities while honoring the ongoing legacy of Jewish resistance. We explore how listening to the earth can restore relationships to lands that carry pain, how the struggles of our people can coexist with their joys, and how we can build lives of deep remembering.

Ami Weintraub (he/they) is a Jewish anarchist writer and Rabbinic student. He has contributed to a number of publications including Tikkun, Jewish Currents, and New Jewish Voices. Ami is the founder and former director of Ratzon: Center for Healing and Resistance, a Jewish, queer anarchist community center in Pittsburgh and is studying to become a Rabbi in the Aleph Rabbinic Ordination Program. Ami’s work and community organizing focus on building a world without domination where people can freely connect to their cultures, lands, and bodies. They call the hills of Pittsburgh, PA and creeks of Silver Spring, MD home.