Hebrew Voices #205 – Safeguarding History: Part 2

Hebrew Voices #205 – Safeguarding History: Part 2

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Levin: So many people ask me, “Well, you just read letters.” And I’m like, “I don’t think you understand how much knowledge I can gain from holding the piece of paper in my hand and taking a look at the way it’s constructed, the way it’s put together.” I mean, there’s so many things that when you get… and I feel the same way about those interviews. Just having the information isn’t enough. Watching it actually happening and understanding what society was like at that point of time is something that can’t be retrieved once it’s gone.

Nehemia: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m here with TikTok creator Levin Parker, who makes videos advocating and educating on collecting. And he has a focus on stamps.

This brings up a different point, which is, how do we know what happened in the past? I think the average person thinks, “Okay, I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.” But what’s Wikipedia based on? It’s based on a lot of scholarly… hopefully based on a lot of scholarly work that’s been done.

Levin: Hopefully!

Nehemia: And what’s that work based on? It’s based on all kinds of sources. We think of something like, let’s say, the American Revolution. So, we have diaries, and we have letters that people wrote.

Levin: Yeah.

Nehemia: And then, we have a history book that was written 100 years later that was based on sources maybe that aren’t around anymore.

Levin: Yep.