https://www.artsteps.com/curate/608b1ca7b71aed05c93713a1/5
Here is the link to my final project. I hope that it works.
I really enjoyed getting to know you guys over the year and I hope to see you all in person next year. for those leaving, all you need do is ask and I shall reveal my contact info. Anyhow, have a lovely day
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mexico-virtual-jewish-history-tour
Henry Belman Mexico city project
Like a BrideDownload
Like a bride by Rosa Nissán was originally published in 2002. It later recieved a movie adaptaition. It is a semi autobiagraphical tale from the point of view of a young Mexican Jewish girl. It examines the struggles of being jewish and of being a woman in Mexico in the mid 50s.
Various jewish locations and facets of jewish culture in mexico are touched upon in this book. the
Lagunilla Market on Comonfort Street is shown to be a hub of jewish life in Mexico city
In the begining especily, the shame of being jewish is brought up, and this also points to the aspects of gentile Mexicans not always knowing much about jews despite there being jews in Mexico city.
Imperfect but better than nothing, It’s more of a basic outline, but I don’t have my format or sources all figured out. I may edit this later. If anyone wants to take a look and give ole’ Henry some suggestions, be my guest, just comment.
this is a short reflection on a class I took in twelth grade, I am tempted to edit this to include some of my long rants(for instance, the fact that there was an entire chapter called “Beating off,” the time he had sex with a piece of liver or the degrading sexaul terms used on his girlfriend, like calling her “the monkey”)
Henry Belman
World Jewish Literature
December, 2017
Kehillah Jewish High School
Independent Reading Project
Philip Roth’s controversial novel Portnoy’s Complaint is a well written but often perverse read. It explores Alex Portnoy’s crisis of identity and struggle with the two contradicting sides of himself: the well educated, champion of the people, pride of his parents side, and the sex obsessed, perverted, narcissist, and generally freudian side. The book appears to be a love letter to psychologist Sigmund Freud, thanks to its embracing so many of his ideas, such as all problems in life stemming from sexaul problems in the childhood. The whole book is a monolog to a psychiatrist, but at points, the plot almost seems over the top Freudian, what with the oedipus complex, the penis envy with his own dad, the constant mastribation, and the amount it has affected him during his life.
There were two key themes within Portnoy’s Complaint that deeply affected me. His struggle with his identity both as a jew and as a person, and portnoy’s obsession with sex and constant mastribation. His crisis of identity is deeply interesting and is consistent throughout the book, but the graphic descriptions of his sexaul extipade, specificaly mastribation are sickining and made me uncomfortable reading it at school. The writing was good and I know it is a bit immature of me to be so squeemish about the disgusting sexaul stuff but I cannot help it. The writing of the book is just as juxtiposialy as its main character, with an even balance between the witty, the yiddish and well educated, and the smutty, self hating and antisemitism. Just like Portnoy himself, the book is great academically, but really is not for school.
In terms of stylle, the writing feels like the exact middle ground between Franz Kafka and Isaac Babel. It feels very psychological, being in my opinion a tribute to Sigmund Freud, but being incredibly graphic in descriptions. The actual themes of Portnoy’s Complaint are a mixture between the fairly common trope of a self-hating Jew with an identity crisis, the identity crisis part coming up in a lot of the poetry and in the Lispector. The graphic sexaul parts and themes however are not like anything I have ever read in this class. In books I have read in general previous to this, all sex was either implied or given a sentence or paragraph confirming that intercourse had happened. Overall, while Philip Roth is indeed a great author, and Portnoy’s Complaint is an essential piece of jewish literature and far more than some simple pornigraphic psudo-story, the amount of smut in the book proved a little over my head. I would recommend this book to a friend as it is good, but I would warn anyone who reads it of the amount of disgusting and graphic scenes in it first. I do not regret reading this book. I just think I may have not been ready for it.
I couldn’t find any Mexico City Jewish Cookbooks. While I do have no doubt that some jews used the general Mexican cookbooks, and there are in turn some Jewish Cookbooks that Mexican Jews possibly used. I did find some modern Jewish Mexican recipies(or is it Mexican Jewish Recipies), but I believe that it was supose to be from the 40s or such and not from resturaunts. Then I saw what the next class was going to be on. Comic books are a passion of mine, and I have a lot of Background info on them. Captain America is my favorite Marvel Hero and I couldn’t help but make an H5P on it. I hope that is okay.
In this person’s opinion, a Jew of Color is any Jew that isn’t solely of ashkenazi descent and isn’t solely of central european descent.
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.
The Jewish people have suffered throughout history, in pandemics and elsewhere. But there is more to Jewish history than just suffering at the hands of antisemites. Learning only about the victim hood of the jews is unhealthy for many reasons, such as occasionally causing more antisemitism as well as just being ignorant. So what we should do is try to show both sides of this history While the suffering of Jews in history is important, it is imperative that we as Jewish historians teach/learn about the prosperity as well as the suffering that was indeed all too common.
The Arguments of this paper are incredibly strong. It is undeniable that Jewish history is all too often overly fixated on the victimhood of the jewish people, often forgetting to mention the great accomplishments of jews and how they added to various cultures. This is weaved well into this essay. It is able to do this without trivializing the suffering. The evidence is pulled from many good sources and the article brings in a good amount of Jewish history to back up many of its points. It also manages to be very concise and not too hard to read, both important tools in getting the message across. All of that said, this article has its weaknesses. It tries to connect the Jewish historical stuff to the current pandemic, and it only works part of the time and doesn’t connect all that fluidly to the main arguments of the piece. That is the only real major weakness of the article. Unfortunately, this weakness is highlighted by the fact that the title of the thing mentions the pandemic. To a degree, it almost seems clickbaity, as people are potentially more likely to read an article that touches on major current events and connects the past to the present rather than an article on the validity of how to look at the past.