Before Election Day, I had myself convinced that humanity was making slow (if sometimes halting) progress in the direction of liberal democracy, and that the light of reason would ultimately prevail.

It's fascinating to watch the theatre of the mind, what slides by and what refuses to be forgotten. This week a fleeting image on a screen caught my eye and stuck in my psyche, echoing for days like an alarm that refused to be silenced.

This week the old Jewish cemetery in my hometown was vandalized. Almost 200 gravestones were crushed or knocked flat off their bases, many in the historic section dating back to the 1800's. My eldest brother Danny is buried there outside of St. Louis, as is my little cousin Menachem who died at seven.

It took me decades to understand my family's tragedies: a brother's suicide, a sister's psychosis, the callous cutting of ties between parents and siblings, between siblings and each other. What made us so volatile, so unloving?

Let me tell you how my world shifted on its axis last month when I traveled to Standing Rock. The first time I set eyes on the encampment was early dawn, just as the dark was lifting.

Back in our camper, by the light of the Shabbat candles, I 'm musing on this astounding week. We arrived at Standing Rock still flummoxed by election returns, and fixated on daily newscasts out of Washington and New York.

I am not an activist. I avoid crowds and cold weather if I can. So why was I was drawn to this relentlessly frigid, straw-colored landscape filled with people this Thanksgiving?

There is a certain pageantry about Jewish holidays in New York City. It is Monday morning, the first day of the Jewish New Year, and teems of well-attired families make their way down the streets of Manhattan's Upper West Side.

It was the smallest thing really. A little bump on the road. I was driving north on I-36 yesterday when I saw a little clod hit and spun around by the car in front of me.

We are nearing the end of our ancestral pilgrimage now. Here I am in front of the Volksopera in Vienna between the feet of the Wicked Witch of Oz, proclaimed dead and powerless amidst bells and revelry.

This morning my head is swimming at the remarkable events that unfolded yesterday in Uhersky-Brod—a verdant, sweet-smelling town in the Carpathian Mountains of the Czech Republic. This is where our great-great grandparents Moses and Tzilka lived and bore their children, so we rented a car to come see what we could find.

I write this from a train, rumbling through the Czech countryside on our way to the tiny towns where our grandparents and families lived and died.

My sister and I had an exuberant day in Prague today, on our feet for nearly seven hours as we drank in the sumptuous sites of the Prague Jewish Quarter.

This is a picture of my little girl. Her name is Emily and she just turned 30.

I remember looking into these eyes for hours at a time…

It is well known that the borders of a child's psyche are highly permeable. Like the feelings that echo between people—what we now call mirror neurons[1]—mental images can be transferred from parents and other adults to younger generations. Although actual memories are not transferred, it is not uncommon for parents and caregivers who have experienced extreme psychic trauma to transmit to a child what has been called an image deposit,[2] that is, a mental picture of the excruciating events that they and others from their group have endured.

All of us carry the imprint of our ancestors, their wisdom as well as their pain. It's part of being in the human family. For years I ran from this truth. I felt the willies when I thought of the weirdness in my lineage and didn’t want anything to do with it. Now I am learning to face my ancestors—and by this I mean all who have gone before me, like my brother and sister who died young. I am learning to call them by name, honor them, and even ask them to be my allies.

A beloved teacher of mine in the world of Jungian psychology once told me this dream:

I am in an unrelenting storm of whirling energy. Everyone is panicking, running about helter-skelter, desperately seeking shelter or escape. Every so often, a bolt of blue electricity tears through the crowd like a buzz saw, threatening anyone in its path. In the midst of the pandemonium I stop to notice that this spiral nightmare is like a crazy amusement park ride, and that everyone has a seat. I quickly find my own and climb into it. No sooner do I click into my place then everyone around me stops running and finds their own seat. Things slow down. The blue bolts of lightning soften and stop and calm takes over.

Last night, I traveled backwards across the dateline, having slipped behind the exotic curtain of Japanese culture for two eye-opening weeks. The impetus for my journey was an invitation from the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research to participate in an interfaith roundtable on the topic of Warrior and Pacifist Traditions in the Three Abrahamic Religions and Buddhism.

The ancestral field has its own magical magnetic pull on us. It compels us toward it like a riptide with both the unworked trauma and the accrued wisdom of the past. So you might find yourself doing things that make no sense at all in the context of your own life, be drawn to certain pass times or people, or have a hidden compulsion that riddles your health…until you discover that you are following the pull of an earlier family member, an ancestor's unfulfilled dream, or undigested tragedy.

Despite the astonishing efforts I made to deny them, my ancestors were incontestably alive within me—with all their foibles and fears. Just as my grandparents' values had coiled down the twisted ladder of their DNA to me—love of the written word, Jewish education, and heavy food—so had the pain and injury of being a Jew been transmitted to me.