"We spent our most formative years together, fumbling towards adulthood. We feigned confidence and lived hedonistically while hiding confusion, pain or personal challenge. Our collective experience bound us together, whether it was the simple things - sports, teachers, music, humor, movies, fashions, adolescent relationships – or the complex times in which we lived. We’re the generation that watched the smoke rise from Alex, from our privileged perch on the hill. We were post-Holocaust Jews in a country oppressing its citizens, learning about injustice yet benefiting from it. Simple times. Complicated times. That was our collective story circa 1976. Some remember it fondly. Others try to forget.
Then we dispersed, to every continent, in search of … something. Many who had it easy left with a sense of obligation to use the gift of an easy life to “repair the world” – Tikkun Olam. Others had great difficulties - family strife, tragedy, economic hardship - maturing quickly to cope with the world, with equal aspirations to find meaning and make a contribution. During the intervening years, we have each written our own stories.
It has been forty years. Forty. Years. It’s time to gather again, to reconnect and recollect. Bob Dylan said, “I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.” Well, you WERE in my dreams, so what were YOURS? How did they turn out?
We need to talk. We need to listen. We need to make sense of it all. Come to Stellenbosch, so we can build our collective story. We can't do it without you!"