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Global Experience - Coggle Diagram
Global Experience
Primo Levi 
Style:
Factual, impersonal memoir; first-hand account with emotion taken out of the narrative; written in an almost "fever dream"; wrote with a clinical detatchment from the narrative
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What is the Cultural Work? Jewish Mantra Never forget, re-salt the open wound of the past; 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust
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January, 1942- Hitler's final solution; Nazi "Death Camps" introduced
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Hegenomy The consensus, the status quo, what is accepted at the time
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Rebecca Goldstein
Style: Elegant; Beautiful prose that is academic but enjoyable to read; follows closely the rules of grammar-- sometimes to the amusement of the reader; clear and cut dialogue with hilarious authorial interjections (in the form of bracketed-off 'thoughts') that add to the richness of the text
Central Themes: Addresses the connection between our minds and our bodies and how/if they are able to work in tandem with one another She realizes the beauty in the messed up, broken, human state of being
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"The older you get, the more time you have to compare to other times you've had" -Dr. Hovind (Makes the car rides longer/shorter, the ice cream better/worse)
What is Noah Himmel? A brain? A body? Some complicated meshing of the two that is a soul? spirit? self? Intellectual/Body
Sympathizing vs. Empathizing
Sympathy is feeling with someone, while empathy is truly exchanging emotion with someone (philosophers argue that sympathy is the closest we'll get to "relating to someone" / "walking in their shoes."
Philosophy
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Dualist- combining of the two; maintaining both physical and mental; "immaterial self in a material housing"
Materialist- All body, "emotions" and "beliefs" are just chemical reactions
Epicurean- Greek Philosopher, Pleasures of Life, Enjoying the "Here" and "Now"
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Asceticism- The body doesn't matter, so forsake it (see example: Julian of Norwich)
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TEACHING MOMENTS
Ask for first thoughts of the reading before diving into discussion ("Before we dive in, I just want to open the floor to you guys and hear your first impressions of the reading..."
know how to carry a conversation that is rambling down rabbit holes back to a topic/idea you had planned on discussing ("Exactly! I mean go to page X with me...")
When discussing novels, give a fun, engaging background to the author's life and why they are so important
Conclude a novel's discussion by asking if anyone has any "closing thoughts on X before we move on?"
Challenge someone's big, grand statement and have them explain to you what they mean (this allows you to gauge their level of understanding with the topic and get them to work on defending their point of view/idea)
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Use BCE/CE when referring to dates/date ranges. "BC" and "AD" both impose a Christian normativity when your class is made up of a broad range of religious beliefs
Grace Paley
Style:
Short Stories; capturing the essence of the people she sees; cultural fragments; only reflecting A reality; the author is only the medium for the art; Paley worked around people constantly while also raising kids; bad ass
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Paley was arrested and jailed for protesting, but she actively worked to preserve feminine writes and fight against segregation
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Captures the horror and lowliness of humanity in stories like "the little girl," not to glorify it but to show that it is out there
Phillip Roth Titan of Jewish American, Jewish, and American Literature
Style: Mixture of eloquent prose and creative liberty, Roth used repetition in his syntax for emphasis, blur/transition between established dialogue and personal thought to create a comprehensive picture of each character
Central Themes: The Trump-Tower Façade of the American Dream and its Crumbling Reality The Messiness of Life Dealing with Imperfections Coping with the Crippling Weight of Life's Responsibilities
What is the Cultural Work? Part of the Jewish experience is being open to the messiness of the world
The Swede illusions are swept out like rugs beneath his feet: the American Dream, the Immigrant Dream, and the Human Nature Dream
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Literary "Pastoral" vs. "American Pastoral"; Roth plays on the irony of thinking about The Swede's life as a pastoral. In reality, it is similar to the materialistic and unrealistic adaptations of later British poets who used frivolous imagery in place of the down-to-earth nature of a an actual farm-hand's daily life. This idealization of "the frolicking shepherd" stretches back to the term's origins in Greece. A "pastoral" was a type of story that involved a young man telling of his being in love and an older shepherd replying that he was once in love as well. This furthers the idea that the title foreshadows the inevitable destruction of the Swede's fabricated and shallow life. (it's also hinted in his wife who actually does hard work on the cow farm she founds)
Isaac B. Singer
Style:
Clear prose that is clever and easy to follow; rich dialogue separated by even richer imagery in narration; simplicity is juxtaposed against complexity to create a flowing, yet succinct, patch-work
Central Themes:
Addressing Jewish Trauma Remembering the past While moving into the Future The Hopes and Possibilities of a Communitiy
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A story with hope; showing the struggle of moving forward with the cultural trauma of Jewish identity behind you; can there be joy left? is it possible to move forward into something beautiful while keeping the past alive? Should a Jew feel guilty for experiencing any sort of joy after so many people had died?
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Herman- did not experience the same Holocaust as Masha, but struggles to make sense of his own life and relationship with his Jewish identity; on one hand, he wants to move forward into something else, but Masha's identity of despair overwhelm him
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Fatalistic Hedonism- our ends are inevitable, so let's just eat, drink, and be merry until we croak
Tamara- the ghost of Herman's past; she goes through a rebirth and recognizes that because their time is limited, it is all the more important to accept life's flaws and move on into something beautiful and imperfect
Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory: Tri-Partite Model of the Psyche- Id, Ego, Superego
David Grossman
Style: Quick, Witty, Everything is happening in real time, I've never read stand-up comedy before, but I still got the little nuances that I would have experienced in seeing a show
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Zionism A response to anti-semitism; need for a "Promised Land;" Herzel and the Uganda Plan (1903)- Jews almost ended up having their "Mt. Zion" in the middle of Africa (Herzl didn't care if Jews had Israel so long as they had a designated place to call their own)
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Amos Oz wanted to live with Palestinians; he believes that taking by force and forcing them out will only continue the cycle of oppression that has damaged the Jewish people
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Edward Lewis Wallant
Style:
Beautiful imagery and writing about the intricacies of humanity: pg. 54 "the mountainous ancient" to describe Karloff;
Central Themes:
Choosing Joy/Choosing Sorrow (Making a Job into a vocation); finding purpose- "I'm New York's most educated rent collector. I'm trying to make what I'm stuck with into a vocation." p.48
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"Moon-bloooo.." p. 245 - opening up the possibility/space in his life for whoever he wants to be. Yes, the scraping away hurt, but it was necessary
There is a detatched, facelessness with money pg. 57 "... in a whore's garter belt. Quickly it lost the brief warmth of that intimate purse when she put it into a collection basket in a Catholic church there."
p. 244 "they sipped and existed." They're able to just "be" with one another. In a city, everyone lives next to each other, but no one lives with each other. Everyone operates in their own little metaphorical/literal apartment buildings.
Franz Kafka
Style:
Long, choppy paragraphs; unbroken to express his free-flowing train of consciousness; difficult to follow at times, but allows the reader to experience a sense of panicky/urgency/claustrophobia
The Style of Long, Choppy Paragraphs was kept to honor Kafka and the way he wrote quickly
Free Indirect Discourse - narration stays the same, perspective constantly changes -
Joseph K. is an unreliable narrator, of whom we know very little about (even without a last name)
Central Themes:
Guilt (and Innocence), Is Guilt Real? Or is it just the Feeling of Being Guilty? What do we know for certain?
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Existentialist life has no inherent meaning; it's up to you to make meaning out of it; we are the embodiment of what other people think of us
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Iterpretation
It is hard to pin down one interpretation of Kafka's work, as no one is quite sure exactly what it means. I still think that The Trial could be read as a mid-life crisis. There is a heavy emphasis on age in the beginning of the novel, and then a sense that his youth is slipping away from him with nothing to show of it. The looming "Trial" is inevitable; "the law is attracted by guilt." the more he feels about his shortcomings in life, the more he draws closer to his trial. K. has spent his whole life in a state of passivity.
Doubt -> Guilt, Repeat. Self-fulfilling prophecy
Died young; Novel(s) left unfinished; his family would go on to perish in the holocaust after he died; had a complicated relationship with women (maybe a reason the women are portrayed so peculiarly in this book)
Casual Absurdism is something that Douglas Adams used in Hitchikers for a humorous effect; Beautiful, elegant, or simply normal descriptions juxtaposed against absolutely absurd ideas or images in the same sentence or paragraph
Trauma
In our presentation we talked about the inherited trauma/obligation Jewish people feel of keeping alive the history that has shaped them into resiliency. While the Holocaust is certainly the most widely-known event of mass-destruction of Jews known to non-Jewish people, it is not the only one. A significant portion of Jewish holidays remember and address the traumatic events that have shaped the Jewish people over the millennia.
Like in Enemies, A Love Story and A Horse Walks Into a Bar, there is a differing opinion among Jews as to which direction to move forward. 1) Totally give into the despair and trauma of the Jewish experience and take it all on yourself (i.e. Masha, Dov's mother) or 2) Completely forget about it and move forward (what Dov's father did). Both options can result in destruction. Totally allowing yourself to be consumed by the atrocities done to you and your people in the past can crush you on a physical and spiritual level. But disregarding your past and pretending that that's not a part of you is equally damaging as it may allow you to repeat what was done to you to someone else. The Community we see at the end of Enemies is an example of remembering your past but moving forward
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The Jewish Diaspora
The Jewish people have suffered through a series of cultural ostracizations over the millennia. The Diaspora (meaning literally "exile," as the Jewish people were expelled from Israel) began after the Roman conquest of the second Jewish temple and the permanent expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem.
Discussed in A Horse Walks Into a Bar, Jews re-entered Israel after WWII when Britain gave them Israel. This, however, was met with conflicting views as people divided on kicking the people of Palestine out of the country or living alongside them peacefully. While Jews have moved back into Israel, this remains a humanitarian issue today as Palestinians are land-locked by Israeli forces into what is referred to as the "largest open-air prison."
Tikkun Olam
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The world is like a broken pot. In life, we understand that it's broken, but each day is a chance to put a piece back together. The goal is to leave the world a little better than the way we found it- understanding that it's okay to live in imperfection