In the film Number Our Days, Barbara Myerhoff studies a community of elderly Jews in Venice, CA. This ethnography contrasts much of Myerhoff’s earlier work and the work of many anthropologists as she studies members of her own ethnic group. This raises some interesting points since Myerhoff is not fully an “outsider” of their community. The audience likely received more information from the interviewees because Myerhoff had a greater instant rapport with them and was able to gain their trust. Furthermore, the tone of the film was made more personable as she tried to find her own identity and sense of belonging throughout her fieldwork. Nonetheless, since she was already a member of the community, she needed to acknowledge her previous bias and beliefs before starting her work in order to maintain the film’s objectivity. Myerhoff …show more content…
Throughout the film, the residents emphasize their relationship with their Jewish culture. For these people, being Jewish is not simply about religiosity – rather, their culture serves to find a community of similar people in their old age. The community center serves as a physical gathering space for the residents to experience shared Jewish rituals, stories, and performances. Although these people may not know each other intimately, they are brought together by their culture, music, and traditions. Additionally, a principal theme of the film regards the elderly people’s experience with aging. In their old age, the residents had a greater acceptance of death – partially sculpted by their Jewish
In the article “Two Years Are Better Than Four” author Liz Addison writes about how community college is a forgotten option for many students in America, and that it is not well advertised like the universities are. She writes about how community college is a great option for students who need a less expensive option, but still want a chance to further their education. Addison also writes about how they allow everyone to attend so you can “just begin”. Community college is a great option for many students because it allows for an affordable option for students to continue their education.
Dealing with the theme of assimilation, Hester Street, set in 1896 was a depiction of the immigrant Jewish community living in the Lower East Side of New York City. Throughout the film, we see the challenges the Jewish immigrant characters endure when their “Old World” traditions, practices, and ideas were juxtaposed with the “New World,” American values. Thus, Hester Street highly endorses the characters’ acceptance with assimilating to American values. Furthermore, the film also showcases the resistance and complications to assimilation as some characters try to maintain their culture.
This film documents Dr. Barbara Myerhoff’s work in studying elderly Jewish people in Venice, California. This was a different kind of study for her, because she was studying people that were of her ethnicity and religion. She is doing this work because she will one day be old and, she wants to know the daily lives of these people. She gets to know the elders by being a part of their community and going to their senior center. She interviews the elders and asks them to be specific about their daily tasks, living conditions, struggles, and their past. Her main focus is on the senior club. Because it is the center of these citizen’s lives. Here they feel like they have a purpose and can express themselves. She also studies how they celebrate the Sabbath every week. A tradition at the club is celebrating New Years at 2:00 p.m. so the elders can enjoy a performance and hear a speech about celebrating life and get motivated for the upcoming year. This study taught her to celebrate life and embrace the process of aging.
In the quote, Woolf is discussing the confidence of women. Since the job of a woman is basically to be inferior to men, women are losing confidence. Women are constantly struggling to do what they want as they require, “gigantic courage and strength”. Wolf believes that men have purposefully made women inferior in order to reinforce their own confidence. Thus, this lack of confidence not only led to lack of quality life for women but also led to a lack of writing. However, even with this lack confidence women continue to persist and do everything they can to write. Woolf believes that if women did have more money and confidence, then they would not have to be so inferior and get married to men so early on. Woolf believes she could have done what she wanted as she would have been financially stable and not be reliant on others. Thus, Woolf could have been the boss of herself with freedom and time. With this freedom and time, Woolf and other women could have had the opportunities to produce the works they wanted to and get it published.
Documentarians often want to get as close to their subject matter as possible. Some documentarians have an insider perspective which ignites a spark to create a piece that illuminates a specific topic or area of study. There are also documentarians that have no affiliation with said subject matter, but want to explore the topic in question. Finally, there are documentarians that have a foot in both worlds. Insider/outsider is a theory in which a documentarian can be close to a subject, but also possess characteristics or traits that make them distant from the topic in question (Coles, 1998). Such is the case with the directors of both Stranger with a Camera and The House I Live In. Due to their own location, both Eugene Jarecki and Elizabeth Barret exhibit characteristics that make them fall into the insider/outsider roles as directors. Robert Coles defines location by stating, “We notice what we notice because of who we are” (Coles, 1998, p. 7). Included in this is, a person’s education, race, class, and gender. Both directors realize they are outsiders and utilize a lens into a world in which they are not otherwise a part of. Jarecki’s lens comes in the form of Nanny Jeter, his family’s nanny from when he was a child. Barret’s lens for her documentary is the community that she shared with Ison. The two directors enter into a world that they are not a part of because of their location, but forge a connection to the subject matter through means of a lens.
These teens have similar and different traits. Each of them lived together and became closer. They also had a different thing to study and learn about. The teens were good friends, Jews, lived in the Annex, and are all dead. Their differences were there genders, age, and parent’s favorite. These similarities and differences helps people understand more about the
Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.
acts like these, Jewish residents at the time tended to keep their religious affiliation on the
“From the day them men are born to up to 5 years old, they live at the Home of Infants where the kids are put in a cellar. When at 5 years old, the children are sent to the Home of then Students where they stay there for 10 years and learn about the history, lifestyle and symbolism of the city and continue to learn at age 15 (Rand 20-21),” this shows that the lifestyle of the people is being controlled and that they don’t live their separate lives individually and they can’t have their own lives set for themselves. At the Home of the Students, they say an anthem which says, “We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives.
The Holocaust becomes the center of this. Whether it be at his Hebrew school, where Jewish history shaped not only the curriculum they learn. But, also as a collective identity shared by a new and contemporary Jewish generation. While still being connected to the past. This is a struggle for Mark, who does not even identify himself as Jewish for most of the story, He is continuously challenged with where to place himself in this new world, as a second-generation immigrant to Toronto. For Mark, being a young Latvian Jew is not easy.
The author’s purpose in writing The Eighth Day was to teach a lesson. Not everything comes to you as easy as you think. Throughout the book, the main character, Jax struggles to obtain his friendship with Evangeline. Jax is called a transitioner. That means that he has eight days in a week. Evangeline is what they call kin. In this book, kin means that she can only live 1 out of all 8 days. This is a struggle for Jax because, for everyone one of her days, he has seven more. Plus, Jax’s guardian, Riley, was trying to keep Jax away from Evangeline. Riley is her captor. He has trapped her in a house and is going to keep her there until she dies. Jax doesn’t realize this is for her own good, and he goes against Riley to get her out. Riley is
Both of the gentlemen stated they had been in other homes and that this was the nicest home they had been in. Kenneth complained of his first home ¡°smelling more like a zoo than a nursing home.¡± John told me that his last home was on the South Side and that the neighborhood was filled with gang bangers and hoodlums. When his family visits here though, they wheel him through the Lincoln Park neighborhoods and it¡¯s nice. For all of the questions that I asked these two men, they had just as many questions for me. Heading in to this assignment, I hadn¡¯t really considered that someone would be asking ME questions. In the midst of all that happens in nursing homes, it¡¯s important to remember that these residents aren¡¯t just dependent, older people, but that they are still people just like you and I.
The first section of the film highlights how Jews lived a very religious life around the early to mid 1910s, before the start of World War I. There were very few Jews in the villages of Poland and the Jewish children did not often play with other children around them. An interviewee remarks on this as being quite a lonely life, but her religion made her content nonetheless. She even states that there was a Jewish star on the roof of her childhood home because her family was very proud to be Jewish. It is also explained that wooden synagogues would be prided upon since they would take a great deal of money and skill to complete (Waletzky).
The book I read was The Eighth Day by Dianne K Salerni.The genre of this novel is fantasy adventure.This book is labeled as fantasy because of it’s magic a well as it’s interesting fictional plot. Adventure is also featured in the title because of all the unusual and exciting occurrences.This piece of literature mixes Ancient magic,Arthurian legend and a modern twist to bring an intriguing book.The complicated alliances and cold-hearted villains keeps the reader on their toes.
A Stranger Among Us is a movie that displays many aspects of ethnicity, and how many different groups of people interact and adapt to each other’s difference. There is a murder and a detective named Emily Eden has to place herself into a Jewish community to help solve this murder. In the film there is several groups displayed and many different perspectives, along with an ethnic neighborhood and lots of learning about the Hasidic culture, and Detective Eden made some crucial mistakes in unraveling the murder. Also, this is a movie that is beneficial to everyone in our class.