Thursday, November 29, 2007
An appraisal of the Blog System
As opposed to the Blog central, individual research blogs help one organize their thoughts for the RAE research paper. Posting on our blog was a constant in the research process. For example, we had to write annotations and explanations of our sources and post them to the blog. We also had access to each other's blogs so we were able to view the research progress of our classmates. Overall, I felt the RAE blog was a superfluous aspect of class. I found the most helpful assignments did not involve the blog. Aesthtically, writing my thoughts into a text entry box was not the best way to foster ideas. I actually thought the most effective assignment was the outline which truly helped me organize my ideas. The blog itself did not help me acheive any insight, it was basically a personal message board. As a matter of communication then, the blog was effective. Besides creating an arena for dialogue between the teacher and student, the blog did little else. Yet for this purpose, it may be a worthwhile addition to the class. However, it should not be added to a curriculum for helping students with research. Reading a blog is significantly more cumbersome than simply keeping a hard copy of the assignments.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Post Script to Synthesis Essay (Late)
After reading the comments on my synthesis essay, I realized that I was on the path to writing a research paper about the Holocaust, not my primary source. When I wrote my outline, I had a reinvigorated approach to the RAE paper, one where I focused on explicating my primary source through secondary sources. Previously, I had been using my cultural text as a platform upon which to pile facts; I saw it as the literary manifestation of my secondary sources. Now, I am viewing the assignment with an inverse outlook: my secondary sources are the factual manifestation of my primary source.
Specifically, I have focused more on the story itself in addition to the allegories and symbols within it. I feel that the innocently observational tone of the story is significant to its overall meaning. I had not even explored this idea in my Rhetorical analysis essay, but after much research it is relevant. As an account of Holocaust commemoration in Israel, "Shoes" presents the perspective of an Israeli youth who is somewhat removed from the Holocaust. His discoveries are analogous to the development of many Israeli pre-adolescents as they enter adult society. As the story progresses, the boy assumes a more intimate connection with his family's past and gains a greater awareness of the relationship between his heritage and the Holocaust. As the study of Israeli students' attitudes toward the Holocaust shows, Israeli teens share the same opinions as the narrator. The tone of the boys narration indicates that he is seeking reconciliation between the Holocaust and modern Israeli society. As a vibrant, socially-conscious society, Israel has reached a certain stasis in her commemoration of Holocaust victims, a state that the boys reaches at the end of the story.
Specifically, I have focused more on the story itself in addition to the allegories and symbols within it. I feel that the innocently observational tone of the story is significant to its overall meaning. I had not even explored this idea in my Rhetorical analysis essay, but after much research it is relevant. As an account of Holocaust commemoration in Israel, "Shoes" presents the perspective of an Israeli youth who is somewhat removed from the Holocaust. His discoveries are analogous to the development of many Israeli pre-adolescents as they enter adult society. As the story progresses, the boy assumes a more intimate connection with his family's past and gains a greater awareness of the relationship between his heritage and the Holocaust. As the study of Israeli students' attitudes toward the Holocaust shows, Israeli teens share the same opinions as the narrator. The tone of the boys narration indicates that he is seeking reconciliation between the Holocaust and modern Israeli society. As a vibrant, socially-conscious society, Israel has reached a certain stasis in her commemoration of Holocaust victims, a state that the boys reaches at the end of the story.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
RAE Checklist
1) I need to meet with Ms. Bates to discuss the viability of my thesis--does it conform to the parameters of the assignment?
2) I need to find a secondary source--if it exists--that discusses the process of writing about the Holocaust.
3) I need to finish reading my sources and contemplating their place in my thesis.
2) I need to find a secondary source--if it exists--that discusses the process of writing about the Holocaust.
3) I need to finish reading my sources and contemplating their place in my thesis.
What's On my plate? How about some Primary Source a al mode.
Alex Greenberg
1) Working Thesis:
Shoes by Etgar Keret presents an allegorical paradigm of Holocaust observance in Israel. The young narrator reaches an ultimate equilibrium between honoring the past and adapting to the future—a state that is universal across Israeli society. Keret explores the societal components of this phenomenon, regarding relationships between social groups and factions in Israel.
2) Sub-claims:
a) In his story, Keret implicitly forwards a secularist agenda. He exhibits the “fighting-culture” of secular Israel through the old man’s militancy. The time and setting of the story also allude to the secular-religious debate that shapes Israel’s commemoration of the Holocaust.
b) In Djerby, the student who doubts the old man, Keret creates a paradigm of the sabra—the Israeli who lived in Israel before the immigration of Holocaust survivors. This character represents the tension between the Gahal (new immigrants) and the sabras.
c) As the boy grapples with the decision to wear his German-made shoes, the old man’s warnings reverberate in his conscience. Here, Keret symbolizes how the Holocaust survivor mentality has affected Israeli society. As direct descendents of survivors, many Israelis have lived with their parent or grandparent’s experience their entire life. This close proximity has affected their outlook on nationalism and religion.
3) More than my secondary sources, I want to focus partially on how the memory of the Holocaust has influenced the voracious nationalism of the Israeli army. I believe that at least subconsciously, Israeli soldiers dedicate their fighting to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Since the army itself is an enormous institution of Israeli society, the pain of the Holocaust is actively present in many Israelis. I haven’t found a secondary source that primarily discusses this topic. It will not be my singular focus, but definitely an important part of my greater thesis.
1) Working Thesis:
Shoes by Etgar Keret presents an allegorical paradigm of Holocaust observance in Israel. The young narrator reaches an ultimate equilibrium between honoring the past and adapting to the future—a state that is universal across Israeli society. Keret explores the societal components of this phenomenon, regarding relationships between social groups and factions in Israel.
2) Sub-claims:
a) In his story, Keret implicitly forwards a secularist agenda. He exhibits the “fighting-culture” of secular Israel through the old man’s militancy. The time and setting of the story also allude to the secular-religious debate that shapes Israel’s commemoration of the Holocaust.
b) In Djerby, the student who doubts the old man, Keret creates a paradigm of the sabra—the Israeli who lived in Israel before the immigration of Holocaust survivors. This character represents the tension between the Gahal (new immigrants) and the sabras.
c) As the boy grapples with the decision to wear his German-made shoes, the old man’s warnings reverberate in his conscience. Here, Keret symbolizes how the Holocaust survivor mentality has affected Israeli society. As direct descendents of survivors, many Israelis have lived with their parent or grandparent’s experience their entire life. This close proximity has affected their outlook on nationalism and religion.
3) More than my secondary sources, I want to focus partially on how the memory of the Holocaust has influenced the voracious nationalism of the Israeli army. I believe that at least subconsciously, Israeli soldiers dedicate their fighting to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Since the army itself is an enormous institution of Israeli society, the pain of the Holocaust is actively present in many Israelis. I haven’t found a secondary source that primarily discusses this topic. It will not be my singular focus, but definitely an important part of my greater thesis.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Research Findings...
In the book "The Seventh Million," by Tom Segev, I found some interesting information about Israeli prejudices against Germany. Segev tells how at the outset of the Gulf War, a wave of rumor and controversy spread around Israel, that the Germans were providing Saddam Hussein with technology and chemical weapons. Forty-five years after the Holocaust, Israelis were reluctant to forget the German atrocities of WWII, and extrapolated them to the Germany of their present time. The old man in my primary source epitomizes this mindset because he urges the children to avoid buying German goods and to actively seek revenge against them. In the greater scope of my paper, this information demonstrates how the Holocaust has so deeply permeated Israeli society, that its memory reveals itself in many national matters. As a side note, today's Israel is more welcoming of German goods. When I got off the plane in Tel-Aviv last year, I saw an enormous Volkswagen (a German brand) advertisement in the airport. Still there are some Israelis who refuse to buy anything German.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Strategy I: Making Sources Speak (other strategy is below)
Part D/Strategy Analyze as you go along…
In reading most of my secondary sources, I have created “journal entries” that evolve has I read more. Essentially, I make an outline of key details or ideas/epiphanies I have while reading that source. Specifically, I took notes on a critical chapter of Survivors of the Holocaust by Hanna Yablonka. This chapter, entitled Sabras and Gahalniks in the IDF, contains perfect information for my interest in the stressed relationships between sabras (native Israelis) and the Gahal (new immigrants). As I read, I wrote down the page numbers of key passages. One passage inspired me to examine the affect the immigrants had on the entire morale of the army. Psychologically destroyed by the Holocaust, the Gahal were simply not suited to fight in a stressful war (the War of Independence, 1948-49). Their inability to summon the fortitude to fight was a burden on the Israelis that had already been fighting. One soldier remarked “Caring for these immigrants demands nerves of steel” (Yablonka 131). I took testimony like this and interpreted it to show that the relationships between the sabras and Gahalniks were strained from the beginning.
One aspect of my primary source that greatly interested me was the author’s omission of any religious allusion throughout the entire story. His subject matter, the Holocaust, has had extreme religious implications in Israel, and I believe his omission is purposeful. In the book The Seventh Million by Tom Segev, I found some interesting material relating to this issue. Segev discusses in great detail the bureaucratic quibbling of building Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem. Specifically, Segev describes the arguments over religious symbols in the museum between the secular and religious communities. One memorial structure received the name “Ohel Yizkor” or Memorial Tabernacle. This name is an allusion to the biblical “Ohel Moed” or Holy Tabernacle, where Moses received instructions from God while the Jews were in the desert. In this example, the religious community successfully instilled religious significance in a part of the museum. Yet Yad Vashem, which is an entire campus comprised of the museum and Holocaust archives, does not have a synagogue, nor does it employ a rabbi. This is especially shocking because with an on-campus place of worship, Yad Vashem could have been a meaningful place for Jewish prayer. The inconsistency of the religious presence at Yad Vashem encapsulates the secular-religious debate over how to memorialize the Holocaust. The two groups clash over many issues, but Holocaust remembrance is especially explosive because of its central position in Israeli society. Etgar Keret, the author of Shoes, is a noted secular Jew, though his brother is a member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. I feel that Keret’s unique, secular point of view had an impact in his writing of Shoes. He describes the boy’s quandary with wearing the Shoes in terms of his personal ethics, not religious ethics. He questions if he is “hurting” his grandfather while wearing the shoes, not if he is dishonoring God. The underlying secularism beneath Shoes implies Keret’s view that the Holocaust should remain a cultural, not religious, matter.
In reading most of my secondary sources, I have created “journal entries” that evolve has I read more. Essentially, I make an outline of key details or ideas/epiphanies I have while reading that source. Specifically, I took notes on a critical chapter of Survivors of the Holocaust by Hanna Yablonka. This chapter, entitled Sabras and Gahalniks in the IDF, contains perfect information for my interest in the stressed relationships between sabras (native Israelis) and the Gahal (new immigrants). As I read, I wrote down the page numbers of key passages. One passage inspired me to examine the affect the immigrants had on the entire morale of the army. Psychologically destroyed by the Holocaust, the Gahal were simply not suited to fight in a stressful war (the War of Independence, 1948-49). Their inability to summon the fortitude to fight was a burden on the Israelis that had already been fighting. One soldier remarked “Caring for these immigrants demands nerves of steel” (Yablonka 131). I took testimony like this and interpreted it to show that the relationships between the sabras and Gahalniks were strained from the beginning.
One aspect of my primary source that greatly interested me was the author’s omission of any religious allusion throughout the entire story. His subject matter, the Holocaust, has had extreme religious implications in Israel, and I believe his omission is purposeful. In the book The Seventh Million by Tom Segev, I found some interesting material relating to this issue. Segev discusses in great detail the bureaucratic quibbling of building Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem. Specifically, Segev describes the arguments over religious symbols in the museum between the secular and religious communities. One memorial structure received the name “Ohel Yizkor” or Memorial Tabernacle. This name is an allusion to the biblical “Ohel Moed” or Holy Tabernacle, where Moses received instructions from God while the Jews were in the desert. In this example, the religious community successfully instilled religious significance in a part of the museum. Yet Yad Vashem, which is an entire campus comprised of the museum and Holocaust archives, does not have a synagogue, nor does it employ a rabbi. This is especially shocking because with an on-campus place of worship, Yad Vashem could have been a meaningful place for Jewish prayer. The inconsistency of the religious presence at Yad Vashem encapsulates the secular-religious debate over how to memorialize the Holocaust. The two groups clash over many issues, but Holocaust remembrance is especially explosive because of its central position in Israeli society. Etgar Keret, the author of Shoes, is a noted secular Jew, though his brother is a member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. I feel that Keret’s unique, secular point of view had an impact in his writing of Shoes. He describes the boy’s quandary with wearing the Shoes in terms of his personal ethics, not religious ethics. He questions if he is “hurting” his grandfather while wearing the shoes, not if he is dishonoring God. The underlying secularism beneath Shoes implies Keret’s view that the Holocaust should remain a cultural, not religious, matter.
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