What do you think of Shmuel’s criticisms and Barbara Myerhoff’s defense of the “graduation” ceremony?
| Subject Anthropology | Topic Book review (Number our days by barbara myerhoff) |
| Paper details Complete these 8 reading assignments in Number Our Days: Foreword by Victor Turner (xiii-xvii)\n“So What Do You Want from Us Here?” (1-39)\n“Needle and Thread: The Life and Death of a Tailor” (40-78)\n“We Don’t Wrap Herring in a Printed Page” (79-112)\n“For an Educated Man, He Could Learn a Few Things” (113-52)\n“We Fight to Keep Warm” (153-94)\nTeach Us to Number Our Days (195-231)\n“Jewish Comes Up in You from the Roots” (232-68)\nEpilogue and Afterword (269-81)As your prepare to write your simulated correspondence, please take the time to reflect on the following study questions:\n\nWhat do you think of Shmuel’s criticisms and Barbara Myerhoff’s defense of the “graduation” ceremony? (Chapter 3)\nWhat do you think of Myerhoff’s claims about the nature of rituals and how they work, and about the tensions between tradition and innovation? (Chapter 3)\nWhat do you think makes a ritual practice (sacred or secular) true, genuine, or authentic? (Chapter 3)\nWhat do you make of Shmuel’s story about the fire and the prayer in the forest? (Chapter 3)\nHow would you compare and contrast Shmuel and Kominsky, and their interactions and relationships with other members of the center? What similarities and differences do you see? (Chapter 4)\nWhat do you think of Barbara Myerhoff’s analysis of the whole Kominsky business? What do you think of Shmuel’s take on what happened and his response to Myerhoff’s interpretation? (Chapter 4)\nWhat do you think of Barbara Myerhoff’s analysis of the Cohen affair? What do you think of Shmuel’s take on these goings-on at the center and his response to Myerhoff’s interpretation? (Chapter 5)\nWhat do you think of the idea that ill feelings or hurtful words can actually cause harm to another person? (Chapter 5)\nWhat do you think of Barbara Myerhoff’s account of how Jacob Koved aged so successfully? What do you think of Shmuel’s imagined response to her analysis? (Chapter 6)\nWhy do you think Myerhoff’s imaginary Shmuel would say that she had a very Jewish dream? (Chapter 6)\nDo you think Jacob had a good death? Why or why not? What do you think makes a good death? (Chapter 6)\nWhat relationship do you see between the directive to “number our days” and the promised consequence “that we may get us a heart of wisdom”? (Chapter 6)\nWhat do you make of Heschel’s comments about pain and being awake and aware and alive, and about pain being the avenue to getting a soul? (Chapter 6)\nWhat do you think of the concept of domestic religion? (Chapter 7)\nWhat do you think of Barbara Myerhoff’s claim that human beings are homo narrans, humankind the storyteller, that the drive to tell stories is an essential part of our very nature? (Epilogue) Write at least 2 paragraphs (approximately ¾–1 full page) of simulated correspondence in response to each of the 8 reading assignments |
