Henry Belman

Common ground: Jews are often racialized, more so than most other religions and eventually some achieved “whiteness” and are widely considered white.

However Jews are in fact far more diverse than some would have you think, since they are spread across the world and are not just white or european.

So we need to readjust our way of studying jewish history, more through the ideas of colonization rather than act as if jews are homogenous.

It is important to look at Jewishness not as a race but as a diverse religious ethnicity and to study the complexities and different people who make it up. 

This paper has strong evidence and research for the things it was trying to prove. There was a good mix of general statements, and specific examples throughout the paper and it even brings in some personal experiences which ground the paper. The authorial voice is pretty strong in some places, which is good. The claims are strong enough to be seen as basically factual and almost indisputable and the topic itself was interesting. 

However, I felt that the thesis was somewhat buried, and it wasn’t that argumentative. For better or for worse, most arguments were laid out as facts which made the paper feel pretty one sided throughout. Sometimes, the writing got a bit too academic, going in circles at points rather than getting to the point. This is frankly a large part of the reason the thesis felt buried.

Overall, the strength out weigh the weaknesses though the weaknesses made it harder to write the precis.