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.