Portnoy’s Complaint is a Story of a Jewish Bachelor by Philip Roth

“The War Against The Jews” by Lucy Dawidowicz explores a very dark time in history and interprets it from her view. Through the use of other novels, she concurs and agrees to form her opinion. This essay will explore who Dawidowicz is, why she wrote the book, what the book is about, what other authors have explored with the same topic, and how I feel about the topic she wrote about. All in all, much research will be presented throughout the essay. In the end you will see how strongly I feel about the topic I chose. I believe that although Hitler terrorized the Jews, they continued to be stronger than ever, and tried to keep up their society.

As a sociologist, Kai T. Erikson looks at history as a reflection of changes in societal norms and expectations. Erikson re-visits his look at historical happenings of the Puritans in his novel “Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance”. By examining several “crime waves” throughout history, Erikson points out several aspects of how we see deviance. After researching Puritan lifestyle and the corresponding influences of deviance, Erikson explores the Antinomian Controversy, the Quaker Invasion, and the Witches of Salem Village.

A Few Good Men portrays the importance of military orders, the reality of the ranking system and how much military leader’s authority can cloud their judgement. Former psychology professor at Yale, Stanley Milgram sought the reasoning behind the blindness of individuals when ordered to perform a task for someone who seems to be an authority figure. His infamous experiment was and is currently being dug through and examined thoroughly. Milgram’s research caught the attention of fellow psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo conducted an experiment with similar interests in mind. He collected 21 men from newspaper advertisements to live in a false prison and live in the prison for two weeks. The experiment lasted six days due to how quickly the experiment escalated and transformed the “prisoners” and “guards” (Zimbardo 116). Their conclusions from both experiments are that power and stress can transform even the strongest willed people. Zimbardo and Milgram discuss the same sort of entitlement Colonel Jessup presumes to order an illegal code red due to his position on the base at Guantanamo Bay; also the entitlement Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee had over the case due to the position his father once had.

The Jews of Sighet were of disproving failure to anticipate Nazi terrorism in reason of two factors: disbelief by doubt and ignorant fear within themselves and their community of Hitler’s extermination strategy. In Night, the author introduces his life as a teenager and his relations with Moshe the Beadle, a shtibl who would joyfully about the Kabbalah and its mysterious revelations and guide him into studying such esoteric tradition, but then drone endlessly about his abhorrent experience of being imprisoned as a deportee. Unfortunately, no matter how much he spoke of it, his words became dust as they left his mouth and had blown in “A calming, reassuring wind” (Wiesel, 6). The people of Sighet bypassed Moshe’s warning signal simply by not taking him seriously, and Wiesel verifies this expression in page 7, presuming how everyone “refused to believe his tales” and “...to listen,” which led them in believing that that “he wanted their pity...was imagining things…” and “had gone mad”. This doubt provoked the inconvenience of Moshe’s hopes to inform his people as a preliminary to an impending event. Wiesel later notes about the ignorant temper that everyone, including himself, showed towards Hitler’s upcoming massacre; they felt that they were “in the abstract” and “The Germans...[would only] stay in Budapest...For strategic...political reasons” (8). Citizens of the city facaded their apprehension of this

Social change comes from a societies understanding and acceptance of controversial topics, laws that enforce social norms and the politics that play a role in such change. The author Gerald Rosenberg of “The Hollow Hope” believes that the Supreme Court is able to bring about social change. Rosenburg main argument seemed to be questioning if a courts ruling that had once been accepted and had standing for several years were to be over turned, would the environment outside of the courtroom suddenly change and be accepting of their division.

Levine’s book titled The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus proves to be a highly informative resource when trying to understand the intricate relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Levine’s primary objective seems to be a desire to address the idea that there is a vast, irreconcilable disparity between the beliefs and practices of Christians and Jews. Levine’s central argument focuses upon a common misperception of this dissimilarity: it is the result of Jesus being in direct opposition to Judaism. Furthermore, she contends that only a decided openness and interfaith dialogue between Christianity and Judaism can truly provide the most complete and compelling portrait of Jesus’s life and work. To me, the most edifying facet of Levine’s argument was her call to anchor Jesus within the historical and cultural context in which he was teaching in order to best understand his work and his message. Levine not only provides support for this idea throughout The Misunderstood Jew, but near the end of the novel also offers up ways in which both Christians and Jews can reconcile these two ostensibly conflicting perceptions of Jesus. Therefore, in this essay, I will analyze Levine’s arguments regarding the importance of historical/cultural context in Chapter One and Chapter Four while synthesizing it with her solutions presented in Chapter Seven.

By analyzing Rose Cohen’s autobiography, “Out of the Shadow”, it uncovers the various social and economical hardships that Russian-Jews faced living in America. Even though adapting to a new life in America came with many obstacles for Jews, Rose’s story shows that many of them made it through their hardships and ultimately overcame their adversities. Rose Cohen’s autobiography serves as a great resource as to what Jewish life was in everyday America during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

In the first volume, Artie ruminates on the subject of Jewish stereotypes and the ways in which his father fits into them. In one panel, he says, “In some ways he’s just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew” (Maus I, Spiegelman 131). It’s important to Artie to portray his father accurately, but he’s understandably concerned about playing into stereotypes. Just like the animal and nationality stereotypes, the stereotypes that Vladek fits into work in two ways. Vladek is the ‘miserly old Jew’ but the text shows over and over again that this same pragmatic tendency helped him survive a lot of times in the war, and so in some ways validates the practice. It’s important to note though, that the tendency to save negatively affected Mala and Artie; they both carried a lot of resentment towards Vladek in the ways that he denied them a lot of basic necessities, and in a lot of ways prioritized material items and money over members of his family. So while the text shows an explanation of sorts for Vladek’s behavior, it doesn’t necessarily make excuses for the problems he caused with his actions later on. The engagement between cultural perceptions and lived experience continues the subversive action that is the basic underlying function of the texts.

The concept of balance is central to Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” The first story of the diptych reflects the opulent and extravagant feasting of a group of lawyers in London, while the second depicts the laborious, cold, and bland life of workers at a paper mill. These polar opposites perfectly illustrate this idea of a worldly equilibrium would have resounded well with Melville’s Romantic, educated, and upper class readership. Though there is much to be learned through this historical context, viewing the juxtaposition of success and struggle through a modern lens yields another perspective that Melville could never have foretold.

Alex’s introduction of himself is exemplifies all of the above and then some by asserting “My legal name is Alexander Perchov” but my friends call me Alex because “that is a more flaccid-to utter version” (Foer 1). From the very beginning of the novel, Alex finds it difficult to see why a Jew would pay money to his dad’s business to travel from wonderful countries like “America to the Ukraine” and thinks that Jews had “shit between their brains” for doing so ( Foer 3). His choice of vocabulary and juxtaposition of words are key factors behind his comic in the novel. For instance, his substitution of the word bored with boring or his usage of the word “bitch” instead of dog. However his lack of exposure to different cultures and people is what truly brings out his blunt personality and allows readers to switch from gut wrenching humor to heart breaking sadness. A prime example of his naivety would be when Grandfather and Alex discover that Jonathan does not eat “meat” and considers him to be crazy rather than believe that he is a “vegetarian’ (Foer 65). While this is seemingly a hilarious conversation between the three, readers begin to see a strain in the relationship between Jonathan, Alex, and Grandfather. Especially when the waitress asks to see Jonathan’s horns after she finds out that he is Jewish from Alex, who calls Jonathan out for being Non-American because of his own personal egotistical problems. This exposes a divide between the Ukrainians and the Jews and their claims of superiority to one another which is still existent today in modern times. Jonathan’s interactions with those around him in Ukraine, just like the waitress, reveals the aftermath of Holocaust in regards to labeling Jews with titles and specific traits. These small actions create a bigger picture that can reflect the tension between other European countries

Since the beginning of the Judaism, the Jewish people have been subject to hardships and discrimination. They have not been allowed to have a stabile place of worship and have also faced persecution and atrocities that most of us can not even imagine. Three events that have had a big impact on the Jewish faith were the building and destruction of the First Great Temple, the Second Great Temple and the events of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will discuss these three events and also explain and give examples as to why I feel that the Jewish people have always been discriminated against and not allowed the freedom of worship.

Throughout the history of America, there has always been a influx of Jews from Europe. Even though Emma Lazarus wrote her poem after the massive immigration of German Jews to America, her poem can be used to describe the Jewish Immigrants. Many German Jews arrived in New York " tired ... poor... [and] yearning to breathe free." While New York City was still a hub for German Jewish immigrants, some had also moved to Atlanta and more Western states. Several of the German Jewish families who immigrated to America will forever have their names etched into her history, through their central role as entrepreneurs in America's expanding clothing industry. They began from humble careers and worked their way up the proverbial food chain. Once

Already I can tell that this book is more difficult than most other novels I have read. It seems as though Roth is in favor of using long sentences and complex vocabulary. I sometimes had to reread sentences a few times because there was difficult vocabulary I needed to look up and the sentences were long. I needed to read each sentence piece by piece to make sure I could understand what the author wanted to convey to the reader. Although the text seemed overwhelming when I read the first few pages; once I began reading sentences in increments I could more easily understand the text.

Every religious group has suffered a time when their religion was not considered to be popular or right. Out of all of these religious groups that have suffered, no one group has suffered so much as that of the Jewish religion. They have been exiled from almost every country that they have ever inhabited, beginning with Israel, and leading all the was up to Germany, France, Spain, England, and Russia. Not only have they been exiled but also they have suffered through torture, punishment, and murder. Thus, because of the history of the religion, the Jewish people have become a very resilient people. They have survived thousands of years carrying their religion with them from one country to

“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