Perfected by Jewish carvers steeped in communal memories and skills handed down through generations, the carousels that Mr. Zimiles found capped an age-old tradition of sacred and secular Jewish art that used biblical, folkloric and Messianic symbols: lions, eagles, unicorns, roses, crowns, Decalogues and the blessing hands of the priestly kohen.
But the 1998 Omagh bomb, when the so-called Real IRA killed 29 people, is in the communal memory as an example of what even a small and relatively disorganised gang can do.
It is clear that the Holocaust plays a large role in the communal memory and cultural identity of American Jews, but how does it affect Americans who have no direct affiliations to Jewish communities?
His most recent work takes a critical look at architectural spaces that constructs communal memory in museums, diasporic communities, and neoliberal cultural institutions in the wider Pacific.
Elizabeth is a fugitive presence in the novel; she exists in the tissue of communal memory evoked by the letters.
Photographers, as this exhibition shows, have an important part to play in these acts of communal memory.
And that means identifying moments such as these, in the nation's communal memory, as somehow contingent on their stewardship.
While the American instead shared his spiky insights with his compatriots, the BBC reverted to partisan self-parody, sensing some integral, institutional role in the forging of communal memory.
But generations of ordinary New Yorkers used them, and in doing so made them touchstones of communal memory.
