Explore conflicting accounts of Jewish Identity in The Mandlebaum
Gate.
The Mandlebaum Gate is a novel by Muriel Spark set in the territories
of Jerusalem and Jordan during the Eichmann Trials. Within the novel
there is a character "Barbara Vaughan" who is a Gentile Jewess. She
travels within Israel and Jordan on a pilgrimage to see the holy
shrines and has various adventures and encounters during her trip. It
is clear from the first few pages of the novel that Jewish identity is
a key theme and continues to be as such throughout.
The first chapter "Freddy's Walk" immediately helps to set the scene
as we see him travelling through the "amazing alleys of the Orthodox
Quarter of Israel's Jerusalem"[1] During this chapter Freddy collides
with a small boy whose mother immediately reacts by scolding the
child, "evidently trying to impress upon him the undesirable nature of
Freddy". Freddy believes that the mother reacts in this way because
she presumes him to be "a modern Jew, one of the regular Israelis of
whom this sect disapproved perhaps more heavily than they did of the
honest unclean foreigner"[2] Freddy goes on to consider "Why couldn't
people be moderate?"[3] in the way they behave towards one another and
accept differences rather than persecuting against them. This
immediately illustrates the attitudes that a Jew could encounter at
this stage in Israel due to lack of public acceptance and conflict
within the territory. A little later in this chapter Freddy meets with
Barbara Vaughan and they discuss the beliefs of Jews, Freddy states
"Most of the Jews here are unbelievers as far as I can gather" to
which Barbara curtly replies, "being a Jew isn't something they
consider in their minds, weigh up an...
... middle of paper ...
...y", "The Mandlebaum Gate"
(Penguin 1967) Pg43
[30] Muriel Spark, "Barbara Vaughan's Identity", "The Mandlebaum Gate"
(Penguin 1967) Pg38
[31] Muriel Spark, "Barbara Vaughan's Identity", "The Mandlebaum Gate"
(Penguin 1967) Pg49
[32] Muriel Spark, "A Delightful English Atmosphere", "The Mandlebaum
Gate" (Penguin 1967) Pg68
[33] Muriel Spark, "A Delightful English Atmosphere", "The Mandlebaum
Gate" (Penguin 1967) Pg68
[34] Muriel Spark, "Abdul's Orange Groves", "The Mandlebaum Gate"
(Penguin 1967) Pg101
[35] Muriel Spark, "Abdul's Orange Groves", "The Mandlebaum Gate"
(Penguin 1967) Pg101
[36] Bryan Cheyette, "Muriel Spark, Writers & Their Work",
"Transfigurations" (Northcote House 2000) Pg66
[37] Judith Butler, "The Norton Anthology, Theory and Criticism"
"Gender Trouble" (Norton 2001) Pg2485
Equivocally, pride is neither a “good” nor a “bad” feeling; it is simply neutral and it definitely depends on how one expresses one’s pride and the outcomes of the expression. Pride definitely makes up to how people perceive their own self-worth and build up their self-right of what should be theirs based on their accomplishments and similar customs and beliefs. Unification of the Italian and Jewish residents only made their pride to be immense. The Jewish and the Italian residents represent Canarsie to their fullest extent in the 1920s-1960s. According to the book, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism by Johnathan Rieder, it details that “Canarsie is a house proud neighborhood of about 70,000 people, mainly middle-income Jews and Italians” (Rieder 1). Rieder
Arons, Ron. The Jews of Sing Sing. New Jersey: Barricade Books Inc. June 1st, 2008
“Whence comes this combination of qualities of mind, body and character? These are qualities with which every one of us is familiar, singly and in combination; which you find in friends and relatives; and which other doubtless discover in you. They are qualities possessed by most Jews who have attained distinction or other success. In combination, they may properly be called Jewish qualities. For they have not come to us by accident; they developed by three thousand years of civilization, and nearly two thousand years of persecution; developed through our religion and spiritual life; through our traditions; and through the social and political conditions under which our ancestors lived. They are, in short, the product of Jewish life.” – Louis D. Brandeis
During the interwar period of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants and American born Jews faced increasing ant-Semitism and discrimination. The external pressure of anti-Semitism and discrimination led to many Jews facing internal anxieties and conflicts about being Jewish and fitting into American society. Assimilation during this period meant fitting into the white gentile majority’s standard of appearance, mannerisms, and middle class ideals. Common stereotypical images from the time depict Jews with large noses and curly hair, women were often portrayed as dominant over their Jewish husbands, and Jews were often seen as manipulative, controlling, and money grubbing. Jews’ limited social acceptance came on by completely abandoning their Jewish identity and avoiding falling into stereotypical images, which was often impossible. These external pressures and internal anxieties did not make assimilation difficult, they made it impossible. Therefore, assimilation only existed as a term and not as an achievable reality. Although many Jews tried to assimilate during the interwar period, they could not because assimilation was only an illusion, a fallacy that no Jew could achieve.
forced to live in a part of Russia known as The Pale (which is now in
Jews in the 19th Century During the 19th the status and position of European Jews changed
If one were to ask a New York resident in the 1950’s how many people he or she would expect to be living in New York sixty years from now, he would most likely not say 20 million. Among those 20 million, it is even more unfathomable that an estimated 1.7 million Jews reside within New York City, making New York home to over a quarter of the Jews living in America today . Amongst those Jews however, how many of them consider themselves religious? Seeing that only an estimated 10 percent of Jews today classify themselves as observant, how and when did this substantial dispersion occur? The period post World War II in America presents the many different factors and pressures for Jews arriving in America during this time. Although many Jews believed America would be the best place to preserve and rebuild Jewish presence in the world, the democracy and economic opportunity resulted in adverse effects on many Jews. The rate of acculturation and assimilation for many of these Jews proved to be too strong, causing an emergence of two types of Jews during this time period. Pressures including the shift to suburbanization, secular education into professional careers, covert discrimination in the labor market and the compelling American culture, ultimately caused the emergence of the passive and often embarrassed ‘American Jew’; the active ‘Jewish American’ or distinctly ‘Jewish’ citizen, avertedly, makes Judaism an engaging active component of who and what they are amidst this new American culture.
Over the span of the Holocaust over 6 million Jewish people were senselessly tortured and killed. The man in charge of this horrible act is no stranger to history, Adolf Hitler. There is only one logical explanation in my opinion for the way Hitler acted. Paranoia. You can clearly see that as soon as he felt that he was being threatened by someone or some group, he just took them out, like the Jews, the Gypsies, the swing kids, and many more. Hitler was scared or paranoid of having his power taken from him so he did what he thought was the best decision that he could do to protect what little power he did have at the time, which was genocide.
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Throughout Jewish History we have seen significant transitions from 2,000 B.C.E. to 1492 C.E. These transitions changed many different aspects of Jewish life. There are three specific events or turning points that caused tremendous change in Jewish life and had many ramifications. These three events were the Formation of the United Monarchy, the Rise of Hellenism and the Golden Age of Spain. Each of these transitions impacted Judaism in different ways that changed it forever. The different groups of people involved changed different parts of Jewish life including linguistics, politics, traditions, and literature.
Yonah’s isolation from a Jewish community limited his sense of Jewishness, but Yonah did everything in his power to remain a faithful Jew. After Yonah found out that the rest of his family left Spain, his easy choice would have been to become a converso and live with Bernardo Espina, but Yonah believed that he “must remain [his] father’s Jewish child though it be [his] ruin” (58). Several things Yonah did in order to maintain his Jewish identity were praying regularly, reciting the Shema every day and saying the Kaddish for his father and others who died. In addition to praying, he tried to practice his Hebrew skills and keep up with the Hebrew calendar. Therefore, he recited “the Hebrew date to himself at every opportunity” (73) and whenever
Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.
Judaism has most interested me, because of the respect I have for the history of the Jewish people and their ability to beat all odds. The perception of God in Judaism is monotheistic; in 2012 the world's Jewish population was estimated to be 13.75 million-according to Professor Sergio Della Pergola (2012) a Hebrew University demographics expert; that means an estimated 13.75 million Jews followed the tradition/religion of Judaism. The ultimate reality in Judaism is God; The Jews view God as eternal- the ultimate creator of the universe, and the source of righteousness. God has the power to intervene in the lives of the Jews. God has been called upon throughout Hebrew biblical history in many different names (ex. Elohim,YHWH), although all names reference the same God.
“Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place” (Paul Johnson).