Reading Response - Tamari

Hello Everybody. :)

Human beings have a tendency to place everything, including people, into boxes. Male, Female, Black, White, Asian, Tall, Short, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Atheist, etc. etc. It  helps our brains process things and when things don't fit neatly into our imaginary boxes, it really bothers us. And thus, a lot of information is presented to us in a black and white matter. In Armstrong's book, and many other articles, there are 'the Jews' and 'the Arabs' etc. And thus we separate them into mutually exclusive groups. While I had never given it much thought, this "one or the other" presentation of information

Before the whole Zionism hullabaloo (no disprespect meant, I just really wanted to use the word hullabaloo), many Middle Eastern Jews absolutely considered themselves Arab. And why wouldn't they? Their families had lived there for hundreds of years, same as their neighbors. It was only over time that their perceptions of themselves changed to take on a more exclusively Jewish identity.

I had never given any thought to how some people may have felt torn during the conflict. You read and hear about everything from a very impersonal perspective, so often, these sorts of things don't even occur to me. When we were reading Armstrong's book, everyone seemed to be in a state of conflict pretty much all of the time. I think that this is due to a) Armstrong fitting a huge amount of information and history into a relatively small book and didn't have the space for details like this and b) the situation in Jerusalem being so much more polarized and intense than in other parts of the country. I shouldn't be surprised. Jerusalem always seems to be the place of extremes.

See everyone in class!