Why it's Time for Jews to get Over the Holocaust

Source:  http://thebeaconmag.com/2012/02/opinions/why-its-time-for-jews-to-get-over-the-holocaust/

The article was surprisingly well-written for such an ignorant title.  In it, author Binyamin Weinreich explains why Jews need to “get over” the Holocaust.  He believes that the Holocaust needs to become a part of cultural memory and history that we can learn from instead of an ugly wound that we continue to poke.  He also discusses how the Holocaust has taken over Jewish culture and how he hopes in the future it can be viewed as a part of Judaism, not its defining point.  The main point of the article was not to anger people but to say that by trying to preserve the Holocaust as if it just happened we are lessening the importance of what occurred and will, therefore, never learn from it.  Binyamin Weinreich is an author for the Beacon Magazine.  He attends Yeshiva University, a private Jewish college located in both New York and Israel.  I believe his intended audience is people in general but more specifically the Jewish community.  They are the ones he wants to “get over” the Holocaust.  However, he also addresses all of mankind in his request to not glorify the Holocaust but merely remember it.  This article was written in 2012, seventy years after the horrible events of the Holocaust, by a man who lives in a situation completely removed from that of Holocaust victims and survivors.  I think that for most people Weinreich did not achieve his purpose because he was very sloppy with his diction.  This can be seen in his choice of title, “Why it’s Time for Jews to get Over the Holocaust.”  He was trying to be clever and instead came off as insensitive and slightly anti-Semitic.  Pathos worked against him here because I, personally, was set on edge for the rest of the article, waiting for him to start praising Hitler or denying the Holocaust altogether.  Another example of where diction did not work out in Weinreich’s favor was when he wrote “get over.”  He meant get over as in accepting the past for what it is and trying to move forward.  Because of his poor word choice it instead sounded like he meant Jewish people needed to get over themselves because the Holocaust wasn’t a big deal.  I understood the points that he was trying to make, not to dwell in the past forever, but he made some unwise choices in relation to wording and offended a lot of people because of it.

The Olympics has Destroyed Womanhood

The source for this article was thethinkinghousewife, a random house wife’s (Laura Wood) blog.  If this wasn't a topic about women and opinions I don’t believe that she would be especially qualified to speak about any current events as much as a journalist would be.  The name of Wood’s blog grabbed my attention immediately because it seemed to me like she would be the kind of woman who ran her home but was still in your face about feminism. I thought that because the title of her blog was the thinking housewife as if housewives were normally not thinking.  Instead, I found that she adhered to the idea of women as homemakers with curves and a cookbook at hand.  The purpose of this article was to address the piece written by Yuksel Aytug, the Turkish journalist who said that the Olympics were destroying womanhood.  Wood felt that it was necessary to show some support for Aytug in the midst of a storm of angry responses to his article.  In the fallout of what most perceived to be an incredibly misogynistic statement Wood praised Aytug for finally saying what everyone was thinking back at home.  The intended audience was for people who agreed with Aytug that female Olympic athletes were ruining feminism or who she felt needed to be swayed into believing that Aytug was not, in fact, a misogynist.  I’m not exactly sure how well Wood achieved her purpose because she seemed to be winning and losing with each word she typed.  On one hand she established ethos really well, backing herself up with the opinions of other people who agreed and had pictures ready to show of androgynous women from the Olympics.  On the other hand, some of her language was far too strong and I found it off-putting. For example, when she said, “The Olympic Games are anti-woman. They require female athletes to ape men in grotesque ways. They compromise female fertility and modesty. They promote the idea that aggression and competitiveness in women are normal and healthy. They debase not just women athletes but womanhood throughout the world.”  To me it seemed like she made a huge claim that she doesn’t have any solid evidence to back it up and a sweeping generalization.  The claim she made was that the Olympics are anti-women.  That’s a pretty ridiculous thing to say, in my opinion, considering that if they were that anti-women then women wouldn’t be allowed to compete in them.  Women, unlike in a lot of other fields, are not treated much differently than the men in this competition and are given just as much praise for their achievements. The generalization she used was that that the Olympics “debase not just women athletes but womanhood throughout the world.”  Just to be sure I was getting the meaning correct I looked up the word debase which was defined as lowering the quality of something.  The Olympics literally put women on a pedestal and give them gold for being the very best at something around the world.  In what way does that debase them?  By using diction with negative connotations like grotesque and debase Wood, in my opinion, achieved the opposite of what she was hoping by making me offended instead of agree with her. 

 

How to Write About Africa

The essay How to Write About Africa is from the book One day I will Write About this Place by Binyavanga Wainaina.  Wainaina is a Kenyan author, as regular as Meg Cabot or John Green, who has been awarded in the past for his works.  It is a satirical piece on what to do and what not to do when writing about Africa.  Binyavanga wrote this piece with the goal of directing people away from the typical stories of Africa where every man is a Warlord and ever child is emaciated and waiting for someone to save them.  Another purpose for his writing might be to tell people how to speak or act in Africa with decorum.  How to Write about Africa was written for a memoir in 2005 after Wainaina had enough of reading about an Africa so different from the world he knew.  The intended audience for this essay was people who need to learn to properly write about any country other than their own without an ethnocentric lens.  It could also have been written for people curious about Africa or looking for a guide to writing about it.  Starting with the title, How to Write About Africa, Wainaina is sending a distinct message: this is not your typical story about Africa.  The very name of his essay implies that not only will he be writing about how other people incorrectly depict Africa but that he will use humor to do so.  By starting off the essay with humor he lightens the mood of what could easily be turned into a condescending rant.  Instead of jumping down the throats of people who stereotype Africa he establishes an almost friendly ease that allows you to read with more comfort.  Wainaina uses biting sarcasm throughout the essay to tease people who write incorrectly about Africa.  For example he says, “Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’.”  This quote is also an example of how how Wainaina parodies African writing.  In this case the subject of the joke would be people who think of Africa as one country with one kind of people and one history.

I will Plant you a Lilac Tree

I will Plant you a Lilac Garden is honestly one of my favorite books ever.  Laura Hillman’s story is one of hope during a dark time, courage under fire, and love despite brutality.  It follows her from the time when she was still called Hannelore and lived at a boarding school for Jewish girls in Berlin.  When she receives a letter from her mother telling her that her father is dead and that she and her brothers Selly and Wolfgang are being deported east she gets permission to go with them.  The story follows her through her times in a ghetto, eight labor and concentration camps, and her love affair with a polish Nazi guard.  She is also put on Schindler’s list but I won’t tell anything about the ending involving her soldier or whether or not she made it to Schindler’s factory.  The memoir was written by Laura Hillman, Holocaust Survivor.  What makes Hillman unique, even from other people in the Holocaust, is that she was one of the chosen few on Oskar Schindler’s list and that she fell in love with one of the guards at a concentration camp.  She is obviously an expert on not only life in the ghettos and concentration camps but also of her own life.  The purpose of I will Plant you a Lilac Tree, like most Holocaust memoirs, is to share a story.    It also shows people the circumstances of Nazi Germany in a way that a textbook never will.  The memoir takes place during ages 16 to 18 of Hillman’s life from 1942 until 1945.  During this period of time Laura Hillman, like many other Jews, was a victim to hate crimes during the Holocaust.  I think there was no particular audience.  With memoirs I never really believe the author is writing for anyone but themselves so they can get the memories onto paper.  Regardless, her audience ended up being anyone curious about the Holocaust and probably even other survivors who might have found comfort in seeing that other people made it out “okay.”  The most predominately used rhetorical device in this book was pathos. In telling her story and the terrible injustices she went though Laura causes the reader to empathize with her.  The most effective uses of pathos in my opinion were the times that she had every day feelings that allowed readers who haven’t experienced anything like the Holocaust to relate to her more.  An example of this would be when she said “Love is not something you plan, it just happens.”  Even people who haven’t fallen in love recognize surprise and will be able to recognize that.  Another rhetorical device Hillman used throughout her memoir was diction.  Her story was retold in short sentences as if she were speaking out loud to each and every person that read the book.  It also gave the impression the words she was writing were difficult to choose and write because of the importance they held to her.  A quote that shows this is one which tells the story of the memoir's title “‘A lilac tree,’ I said.  ‘It bloomed every May around the time of Mama’s birthday.  Papa was a romantic; he would stand under the tree and sing songs of lilacs and love to her.’”