Number Our Days

Number Our Days, by Barbara Meyerhoff

Anthropologists generally produce their insights by studying distant and exotic cultures. In Number Our Days, anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff tells of her work studying a group closer, yet still distinct. She did this fieldwork during the 1970s in a Jewish senior community center in Southern California. Its members are "twice survivors", having first survived pogroms and the Holocaust by emigrating, and then survived most of their generation by outliving them. Meyerhoff discovers great vitality, variety, warmth, and courage. Her anthropological insights - and there are many - are overshadowed by the intense humanity of her experience. This is a heartwarming story. The title comes from the prayer, "Teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom."
-Richard