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.
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Alex, thanks for letting us use your Synthesis Paper as a window into some of the patterns that were happening within other papers, too.
We didn't have enough time for this little bit, which I had hoped to include: I wanted to read aloud the first paragraph of your primary source (the short story) and discuss how analysis elements of that cultural text (the voice and style) could be more present in your synthesis essay. It might be worthwile to try that out on your own.
I'm copying and pasting your outline here as a back-up.
Alex Greenberg
OUTLINE
STEP I
Argument:
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.
Topic 1) Keret’s secularism
Topic 2) Djerby vs. Narrator: the debate of Sabra (Israeli Native) vs. Gahal (immigrant)
Topic 3) The characters of shoes identify in different ways with Holocaust survivors
STEP II and STEP III
Topic 1: In Shoes, Etgar Keret implicitly forwards a secularist agenda.
Evidence 1: Keret only mentions the word “Jew” one time and never even alludes to Jewish religiosity or practices.
Lawrence L. Langer, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination
This source discusses the “amount of Judaism” present in Holocaust stories and how that affects the meaning of the story. In my case, I will show how Keret’s willful omission serves to proffer a secularist ideology.
Evidence 2: The setting of a Holocaust museum on Holocaust Memorial Day highlights the significance of these elements in Israeli society. Specifically, they represent the debate between secular vs. religious factions.
Source: Tom Segev, The Seventh Million
Segev devotes an entire chapter to the formation of Holocaust Memorial Day and the creation of Yad Vashem (the national Holocaust museum). He discusses the political debates between secularists and haredis (religious Jews). I will argue that this choice of day and setting superimposes these debates over Keret’s story.
Evidence 3: The old man expresses his desire to fight the Nazis, but not die at their hands. In this way, he embodies the secular notion of “hero” rather than the religious notion of “martyr.”
Source: Tom Segev, The Seventh Million
Segev discusses the differing implications of “hero” and “martyr.” The old man’s resemblance to a “martyr” supports my claim that Shoes is a secularist story.
Topic 2: In Israeli society Holocaust survivors were first isolated and then later assimilated into the mainstream. Similarly, Keret demonstrates attitudes toward the Holocaust evolving from skepticism to acceptance.
Evidence 1: Djerby, a pivotal character in Shoes, undermines the old man’s story and cannot identify with the plight of the Holocaust survivors.
Source: Dalia Ofer, The Holocaust, The Creation of Israel, and the Shaping of Israeli Society
In this source, Dalia Ofer discusses the early rifts between the Sabras (native Israelis) and Gahal (immigrants, post-Holocaust). I will argue that present day Holocaust commemoration is partially an ever-evolving discourse between these two groups.
Evidence 2: “Every time you see German products…you should always remember that underneath the fancy wrapping there are parts and tubes that they made out of the bones and skin and flesh of dead Jews” (42).
The old man’s prejudice toward Germans has had a presence in Israeli society, but has recently dissipated.
Source: Tom Segev, The Seventh Million
I will use Segev’s anecdote about Israel’s anti-German sentiments in the Gulf war to prove this point.
Evidence 3: The narrator is allowed to play soccer with an exclusive group of boys from the “Borochov neighborhood.” Berochov was an Zionist in the early 20th century and therefore, the boys represent Zionism and secularism. Personifying the boy’s dead grandfather, the shoes are the manifestation of the victims of the Holocaust. By accepting the narrator into their game, the boys tacitly accept Holocaust survivors into the mainstream.
Source: Hanna Yablonka, The Sabras and Gahalniks in the IDF
Yablonka chronicles (with statistics) how the Gahalniks were isolated in the military when they first arrived to Israel. However, these relations have softened in the present day and the rift has become somewhat of an anachronism. The incident with the Borchov boys allegorizes this acceptance.
Topic 3: The varying social groups in Israel each have different methods and styles of commemorating the Holocaust. Similarly, the characters in Shoes observe the Holocaust in alternative ways—and sometimes not at all.
Source: Uri Farago, Attitudes Toward the Holocaust Among Israeli High School Students
Evidence 1: Djerby represents those who belittle the Holocaust. “Djerby, who was sitting next to me, said the old man was lying” (42).
Source: Hanna Yablonka, The Sabras and Gahalniks in the IDF
Evidence 2: The narrator’s mother has sparse knowledge of the Holocaust even though her father was a survivor. On one level, her ignorance shows Holocaust survivors’ repression of their memories and refusal impart them to their children. As the narrator realizes, “Mom didn’t have a clue. She had never been to Volhynia House. Nobody had ever explained it to her” (43).
Source: Uri Farago, Attitudes Toward the Holocaust Among Israeli High School Students
With his detailed survey results, Farago discusses the Israelis who mirror the narrator’s mother and have little knowledge about the Holocaust. Even though the mother was the daughter of a survivor, she remained uneducated—a product of her father’s fear of confronting the past
Evidence 3: The narrator himself discovers his own method of commemoration at the end. It is a compromise between honoring the past and growing into the future.
Source: Dalia Ofer, The Holocaust, The Creation of Israel, and the Shaping of Israeli Society
Source: Tom Segev, The Seventh Million
As many of my sources discuss, contemporary Israeli society has struck a tentative balancing point in its Holocaust commemoration. The memorial constructs (museums, memorial day, etc.) are firmly entrenched in society and Israel has fallen into a specific routine of observing the Holocaust. The boy’s internal compromise symbolizes this reaching of equilibrium.
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