In the eyes of Jonathan Safran Foer, the world could always use more writers, even if they’re never published.
“Writing is a great way to encounter yourself,” the bestselling author said at the Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay’s annual fundraiser in Oakland Sunday night. For Foer, the craft has opened him up and helped him see himself in different ways. “Instead of knowing the person that you are when you work a room, or when you’re in conversation on a stage,” he said “you get something much more unguarded.”
Foer appeared as the keynote speaker in conversation with Berkeley author Elizabeth Rosner. Organizers said the event raised $163,000 toward its fundraising goal of $225,000.
Foer said he was initially unfamiliar with the 150-year-old organization, but learned through research about its mission to help resettle refugees and provide social services to Jews of all ages.
JFCS East Bay’s financial and mental health assistance for Holocaust survivors resonated with Foer, the grandson of Polish survivors who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in 1949.
“I just feel a special connection to the mission here,” he said to the 350 attendees at an event venue in Jack London Square. “I’m really, really honored to be a part of it. It makes me very proud to be Jewish and very proud to be American.”
Foer’s debut novel, “Everything Is Illuminated,” was inspired by his family’s personal history during World War II. The book follows a character bearing his name who travels to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis.
He went on to write three more novels, the second of which, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” spent two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His first nonfiction book, “Eating Animals,” a deep interrogation of the American meat industry and factory farms, earned him a spot on Wikipedia’s list of famous vegetarians.
Yet it was the story behind “Everything Is Illuminated” that Rosner, an acclaimed author herself, honed in on Sunday night. Her first nonfiction book, “Survivor Café,” explores inherited trauma and memory through three trips to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
“I am more afraid of forgetting my parents’ stories than I am of forgetting my own,” Rosner said.
Foer said his concern is different.
“My anxiety these days is not so much that I will forget, but that I won’t learn the lessons that I need to learn in time to apply them,” he said.
Foer also reflected on his family history, including his maternal grandfather’s suicide when his mother was 7 years old. He wondered aloud if the situation would have been different if his grandfather had access to the same resources JFCS East Bay provides to refugees today.
“Largely, I believe it was because there was no support network,” Foer said. “He didn’t speak the language. He had to figure out a way, with my grandmother, to make money, put food on the table.”
Foer teaches at New York University, where he serves as a distinguished writer-in-residence. Last year he co-launched a writing MFA program at the Jewish Theological Seminary with Israeli short story author Etgar Keret, who directs the program.
He said he teaches one skill that is not directly about writing but simply about observing and noticing. He urges people to pay attention to the moments that stay in their thoughts, which he calls “stickiness.” Foer sees it as a life skill that could benefit anyone.
“Most of the things that we hear or see or experience just kind of bounce off of us,” Foer said. “And some things, for whatever reason, stick to us. We continue to think about them, and we continue to feel them.”
Storytelling and memory were themes of the evening, even before Foer spoke. Sam Alcabes, board president of JFCS East Bay, encouraged attendees to talk about the importance of the organization’s mission to the next generations.
“Pass this on,” Alcabes said. “Tell your children and grandchildren that this matters to you, and for them to get involved. Keep telling your story to whoever will listen.”