A great grandmother’s secret recordings inspire new play about antisemitism

When Peterborough poet and playwright Jon Hedderwick was a kid he stumbled on two unmarked cassette tapes tucked away in a China hutch in his great grandmother’s apartment.

Back at home, Hedderwick pressed play and heard his Bubie Sarah, who was born into a Jewish family in present-day Poland in 1907, begin to tell her life story. She grew up as the First World War raged and as a number of pogroms, organized massacres of Jewish people, were being perpetrated in Eastern Europe. 

As Bubie Sarah recounted one particularly harrowing story from her childhood, Hedderwick’s mother took the tapes away from him. He didn’t get them back until 30 years later.

In his new one-man play, Bubie’s Tapes, Hedderwick shares what he discovered on those recordings as he makes a pot of matzo ball soup for his daughter. The play premieres at the Theatre on King on January 17, 2024.

Hedderwick began writing the play in 2020, but said it has now become “tragically timely,” with both antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise as Israel continues its assault on Gaza in response to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel last October.

Currents reporter Brett Throop spoke with Hedderwick at the Theatre on King during a break in rehearsals.

BRETT: You found the tapes while helping clean your Bubie’s apartment after she moved into a long-term care home. Tell me about that.

JON: Everybody’s sifting through her things, and someone turns me in the direction of the China hutch. I found a couple of what I thought were blank tapes. When I went home that evening to make a mixtape, it turned out they weren’t blank. She had decided to record, or at least start recording, her life story. 

When I realized what I’d found I got my mom, and she took the tapes away. I spent a number of years trying to get them back. When she finally gave them back to me I listened to them for the first time in the studio at Trent Radio. There were all kinds of stories on the tapes pertaining to the First World War and a little bit the Russian Revolution and things that alluded to what life was like for Jewish people at that point in history. She distinctly remembers being seven years old and the German army rolling through her town and telling her that the war had started, and that they had to leave.

BRETT: What about these recordings was so captivating to you, and what made your mom take them away?

JON: For me it was, in part, the mystery. I really just wanted to know what was on the tapes. It wasn’t like constantly, ‘I want the tape, I want the tape, I want the tape.’ But I’d ask for it every once in a while and we’d have a bit of a joke about it.

My mom was never clear about why she took them away, until quite recently. She had learned, not these stories, but our history quite young, and it scared her in a big way – as it did me when I finally learned this history – and I think it was hard to talk about. 

The Holocaust was part of her understanding of her history. I remember her talking specifically about watching a documentary when she was very young, and being quite scared. There is a long history, I think, of Jewish people having to come to terms with how to transmit this history intergenerationally. There are both the ongoing risks of antisemitism, when it rises and falls, and also this historical trauma that is part of people’s personal narratives.

BRETT: So she was trying to protect you.

JON: I think so, yes. As a kid, I never even connected that that might have been her reason. 

But one of the really interesting things about this process has been that my kid, who is nine, threw me for a loop and said ‘I want to come to the play.’ In the play, I’m telling the story of what’s on the tapes to her when she’s older. In real life, I’ve actually been telling the story to her at nine years old. It’s been really interesting because I’ve had to navigate how to talk about this. I think it’s really important to understand this history. But I also think the fear associated with carrying these stories in your ancestry can also be dangerous in its own way. How to transmit those stories I think is a really complex question.

BRETT: So there’s the risk of talking about these difficult histories in a way that’s going to traumatize kids, and then there’s also a risk associated with holding it in and them not knowing their history.

JON: Which also tends to aid in assimilation. I’m a very assimilated Jew. There’s whole histories of people who abandoned this identity following the Holocaust. 

My wife, who is not from a Jewish background, kept saying, ‘I think you’re projecting a bit. It’s gonna be different for her than it is for you.’ That was the first thing my kid said: ‘I think it’s different for me than it is for you.’ Not that she didn’t take it seriously. But I think not knowing the people personally who this happened to, being a little bit more removed from it – it’s changed her relationship to it. But it was really hard for me to talk about and it was actually really hard to learn these stories in a big way. I remember the night I finally listened to the tapes, I sat in my car afterwards. I remember thinking to myself that there was something really profound about knowing that somebody who I loved so much was targeted as a child, just because she happened to be Jewish.

BRETT: What did you want your daughter to understand about your family’s history?

JON: I’m a firm believer that all of the systems of oppression that exist out there, whether we’re talking about anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, trans misogyny – they support each other. And they support the systems of power in which they exist. I want her to feel empowered to do things to make the world feel safer for herself, but not in a way that tramples on or imposes her will, or removes rights from other people. Clearly, I’m talking a little bit about what’s happening in Palestine and the State of Israel right now. That has really influenced the way the production has unfolded. 

BRETT: How does everything you’ve discovered about your family’s history influence how you’re thinking about Israel’s war in Gaza?

JON: I’m gonna say to you a thing I say to my kid in the course of the play: that is a big question.

It’s really important that we are able to hold conflicting truths simultaneously. It’s essential that we are mindful of the ways that antisemitism and Islamophobia are both on the rise right now in Canada and all over the world. Jewish people and Palestinian people are both being collectively blamed and targeted. I know so many people who are afraid right now. At the same time, as a Jewish person who knows my history, who hears Israeli politicians claiming that they are acting on behalf of all Jewish people, I believe that it is essential that we not allow our fears to be weaponized or used to justify the war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government right now. I don’t claim to speak for all Jewish people. While there are many who share my views, we are not a monolith. What I have taken from the stories passed down to me as a Jewish person is that no one’s identity should ever put a target on their back. I believe that none of us will ever be free unless all of us are free.

Hedderwick will perform Bubie’s Tapes at The Theatre on King from Wed. Jan. 17 to Sun. Jan. 21. In-person tickets are sold out, but a recording of the play will be available starting Jan. 22. For details, visit Public Energy’s website: https://publicenergy.ca/performance/bubies-tapes/

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.