Lots of geography covered with an ethnography (just trying to make it rhyme!)

This is a very hard reflection question to answer. Last year, I spent my junior year abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. I was fortunate enough to take a couple classes that dealt with the culture of Israeli’s and their neighbors. Through one of these courses, a small group including myself did an ethnographic research project in a neighborhood in Haifa. Haifa is known for being cohabitated by Jews and Arabs. We had to formulate our own questions, give the interviews and then transcribe the interviews into formal papers showing our research. Through this assignment, it gave me a much greater understanding of what ethnography is and made me want to do even more of this type of study.

I would love to study the Jews of London. They have been there for such a long time, beginning with the migration of Jews from the Ottoman Empire. There is such a long history with them, and I never even realized there was such a big community until I visited there for a few short days last year. When I visited, my friends and I arrived at our destination on the bus and were able to see all the Jewish shops and whatnot. We could tell the exact moment from which we entered the community. I would love to do more research there, of people young and old to hear how they came to the community and how they feel about it. After doing this research, I would then like to study the places in which the people of the community came from. As I have learned from a class I am taking at the moment, a lot of the Jews from London originally came from Portugal. I would love to see if this still is prevalent in the London community today.

I would try to accomplish this work by going to a Synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of London and ask to be set up with a family nearby. Through this, I would be able to gain connections with others in the community and nearby. This would be worth doing because the history of the Jewish people is very important to me personally and academically. I am a Jewish Studies major with a concentration in History and Society. I am fascinated with the history of all the communities of Jewish people and for some reason, the London Jews fascinate me the most.

This is in response to reflection question 7.

conjunction junction, what's your function?

Upon reading chapter 6, I find the structuralism approach the most compelling. I do not agree with the functionalism approach because I think there is much more to folklore than what it does and means. Structuralism focuses on even more than on a plot of a story, but also the characters and the actions they perform. This approach goes deep into a story and can bring out more meaning than just looking at the plot. A riddle or joke is a good example of this because in order to truly understand the riddle or joke, it is necessary to dissect every word in it. The structures of myths and the like vary from culture, religion, and the region from where is came from. The structure can give big hints as to the answers of these questions. The structuralism approach is mainly for verbal folklore but it has grown into being for written as well. It is much more difficult understand the meaning of something spoken, than something written.

I also think that the psychoanalytic interpretation is very interesting. I like how it goes even further than functionalism, by that it also goes into interpreting symbols and other things beneath the surface of a story and the like. Using linguistically cues and symbolic metaphors is so interesting to me and I think it is really interesting when they are interpreted correctly.

This is in response to reflection question 6.

When I grow up, I want to be a performer.

Performance has definitely grown into a phenomenon on all levels, whether is it cultural or social. Chapter 5 introduces different ideas and examples to deepen this opinion. The chapter describes what performance is as well as why it is so important. What is important about is the “explicit and implicit relationships between performers and audiences, and the complex dynamics that lead to or stem from these relationships” (128) Performances all around us, whether is it storytelling, music, or anything in front of an audience. Not all performances are apparent, as they can be very informal and happen on a daily basis. Clarity is imperative in the relaying of a performance, because if the audience doesn’t understand, or even worse the performers don’t even understand, then the message of the performance is lost. This chapter has deepened my understanding of performance because I used to think performance was just a group getting in front of an audience and doing something, just in general. I didn’t realize that just saying a joke with a friend in front of a couple people could count as a performance. The chapter also gave me a better understanding of the cultural and social aspects of a performance. Those things influence a performance, the performers, and the audience.

I recently went to a performance of Indiana University’s acapella group, Straight No Chaser. They are not a folk group, but essentially are a folk group of the university because they carry a history and are very much associated with the university. Along with them, everyday I see performances going on just on the street, and now I will be more aware of them due to the reading of this chapter.

This is a response to reflection question 5.

peer response

This blog is a peer response to Btown Folk’s response about being far from home. Btown Folk wrote about moving away from home after living in the same town for such a long time. He made a big leap from going from a small town, to a huge school like IU with 40,000 people. He soon was able to connect with a small, close-knit group of people, so he was able to feel more like he was at home.

When I first came to IU, I thought that I would never see anyone I knew because the campus is just so big. I knew that I would have to fit in somewhere and find my own “folk group”, but it just didn’t seem possible with that many students. Four years ago, on my first day as a freshman, I realized that two people from my high school were living on the floor right below me. I couldn’t believe it and knew that I would be able to find my own group. Over the next several weeks, as I joined Hillel, the Jewish group on campus, I started noticing more and more people I knew. Everywhere I went, I would see people I knew from Hillel and it would just amaze me that with a campus so big, I would be able to connect with so many people so quickly. Even within Hillel, I met people who went to my camp and we would be able to sit for hours and just share things that no one else would understand. I didn’t even know they went to school at IU, but they introduced me to people they knew and it just snowballed into a huge group.

There is just something that makes me feel good when I walk through campus and randomly see people I know. It makes me feel even better when I haven’t seen them in a long time and get to reconnect. I hope that this will continue on when I move away from IU and get a job somewhere else. I am looking forward to the day when I run into someone I met from IU and can just stand in the middle of the street and reminisce.

Rituals - to do or not to do?

Rituals have always played an important part of my life. Every day I do some sort of ritual, whether it be my morning ritual of washing my face and brushing my teeth, to something religious like saying the blessings over my food. The type of rituals mentioned in the chapter are those that "are performances that are repeated, patterned, and frequently include ceremonial actions that incorporate symbols, actions and repetition" (Sims and Stephens p. 95) These types of rituals are those such as life cycle events, holidays, and other types of events. The chapter then goes on to discuss different types of rituals. There are low-context and high context rituals and invented rituals. Low-context rituals are less formal than others and may not be planned in advance. The only one that I can think of is the one that is already written in the book, and that is the ritual of throwing salt over oneÂ’s shoulder if it gets spilled. After thinking for a bit another one I can think of is when someone says to someone else who is driving to not get in a crash and the driver knocks on wood. A High-context ritual is one that is planned out and is more formal. In the Jewish faith, before eating, one is to wash their hands and say a blessing. This would be an example of a planned out ritual. The last type of ritual is the invented ritual. The difference between the different rituals are that "invented rituals may primarily reflect awareness that a group needs traditions to participate in with some regularity and which can identify individuals as members" (Sims and Stephens p. 101)

I have participated in several invented rituals. Two that are the most vivid in my memory are those from elementary school. I went to a Jewish Day School when I was younger and in order for us to feel more like adults, they created ceremonies for the 3rd and 5th graders. In 3rd grade at the beginning of the year, the students are given their own siddurs (prayer books). Each student prepares one of the prayers and as a whole the class prepares a song. After a couple weeks of learning, the students are given their siddurs at a ceremony with all of the parents. It is a pretty significant ceremony to the child at the time as they are given a book that allows them to pray whenever they want and to "find" G-d when they feel fit. The 5th graders go through a similar type of ceremony but are given a Chumash (Torah) instead. In both instances, these are invented rituals that have grown significancence over the years at the school. I still remember both ceremonies very well and will probably remember to tell my children about them when they are old enough.

This is in response to reading question number 4.