Remembering Jerusalem and remembering

childhood are both, in many ways, missions

impossible. On the latter, Vladimir Nabokov,

in his wonderful autobiography Speak

Memory, notes that childhood memory

commences as “spaced flashes” until

“bright blocks of perception are formed,

affording memory a slippery hold.”1 And

few can write of their childhood without

imposing an adult narrative framework

(and sometimes an adult agenda).