Long before she was hailed as the “voice of her generation,” Lena Dunham decided to spend her college summer vacation in Poland. Her Jewish grandmother Dorothy and mother Laurie, from a family that lost many members in the Holocaust, couldn't understand why she chose that destination. “My mother said, ‘well, why would you want to go there? It's so scary and sad,’” Dunham revealed when we met recently during the Berlin Festival.
“My mother and my grandmother's idea was ‘no, I don't ever want to go there.’ Like we know enough. We know enough about the pains of being Jewish.
” Treasure trailer Dunham ignored their advice and went ahead with her plans. She admits that the trip was primarily about drinking alcohol and meeting boys, not about discovering her identity. At that point, she was unaware of her roots.
Years passed, and Dunham became a renowned creator and actress. It was then that she found herself reconnecting with her roots. Three years ago, she chose to marry British musician Luis Felber, whose father is Jewish, in a traditional ceremony.
“My grandmother died in 2016. She was 96. She had been such an influential part of my life.
I got to have her my life until I was 30 and it pushed me even further into considering what being Jewish meant to me,” she said. She began studying with a rabbi, reading religious texts and works by authors like Yehuda Amichai. She appreciates that in Judaism, having a relationship with God is not mandatory; what is ess.