Practicing Imperfection: A Zen Rabbi and the Limits of Historical Inquiry

Archives and Autobiographies

We do not have unfettered access to all of Alan Lew's thoughts, experiences, and feelings, rather, our understanding of his life is mediated by the words he left us with. Because of this, Archives and Autobiographies asks you to think about the relationship between Lew’s life, the records he left behind, and the history we can write about him. It’s important to remember that historians do not simply pluck facts from the ether. We have to find them. And, what we find depends, in large part, on where we look. In this exhibit, we have used information that comes from one of two sources: the personal papers that Alan Lew left behind that are held at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collection and his published works, which include autobiographical information and personal ruminations. Each source, however, should not and cannot be treated as an objective and unencumbered window into who Lew was. As such, we now turn to source criticism – a technique historians and other scholars use to evaluate the records from which they are gaining their information.
 

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