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.