The Sarajevo Haggadah

Lamed Shapiro’s “The Cross” tells the story, in vivid and disturbing detail, of a Russian Jewish man who is attacked in a pogrom, alongside his estranged mother, and is branded on the forehead with a cross by his attacker. Blume Lempel’s “Images on a Blank Canvas” tells another story, in equally vivid and disturbing detail, of a woman mourning the death of her friend, a prostitute who committed suicide. In these two stories, there is one striking similarity: The survivor is portrayed by the non-survivor. In “The Cross,” the Russian Jew is depicted by his mother as the brutally murdered non-survivor of a pogrom. In “Images on a Blank Canvas,” Blume Lempel, the survivor, is depicted by her fallen friend Zosye. Through the depictions of survivors by non-survivors, Shapiro and Lempel are able to unpack the trauma stemming from a pogrom and a suicide and its effects on the survivors.

“After the War”, a book written by Carol Matas, is a captivating story about a group of Jewish people who illegally immigrate to Palestine. Throughout this story, we learn about the many struggles that the Jewish people had after WW2 ended. They had to find many ways to fight for their right to live. Some of these survival techniques include lying, stealing, and hiding.

To begin, in the book Night, the Jews were being judged because of the way they looked, the religion they followed, and their ethnicity. Moishe the Beadle was deported because he was a foreign Jew. Rumors were spreading about Nazis coming into towns and taking over. After some Jews were deported, life became normal again. Everyone was doing everyday activities. “The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they left, it was rumored that they were in Galicia, working, and even that they were content with their fate. Days went by. Then weeks and months. Life was normal again. A calm, reassuring wind blew through our homes. The shopkeepers were doing good business, the students lived among their books, and the children played in the streets. One day, as I was about to enter the synagogue, I saw Moishe the Beadle sitting

Global warming is the rise of average temperature in the earth’s atmosphere since the late 19th century. Since the beginning of the early 20th century, the earths mean surface temperature had increased by around 0.8 degrees. Warming of the climate system had become more obvious and scientists are 90% sure that the main cause of the increase in temperature in due to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases due to human activities such as deforestation and burning of fossil fuels.

The Main Character in this book is Hannah, which in this new world she experiences she’s called Chaya, which is her Hebrew name. Also, there is Hannah’s little brother Aaron and her parents. There is also Hannah’s Grandpa ,Will, who was apart of the concentration camps when the Nazis ruled over Germany. Gitl and Schmuel where also apart of her family in Lublin. Also, the Nazi soldiers who took her to the concentration

Furthermore, as the narrator’s life begins to slowly unravel and tumble down in front of him, he is forced to wonder if there really is a God. For example, Eliezer, the main character and narrator of the memoir shows his journey throughout the Holocaust. In the first few sections of the book, he is devoted and loving towards God and the Kabbalah’s festive and cultural requirements. However, as he is then captured and introduced to the horrors of the concentration camps that he is taken to, some being Auschwitz and Buna, he begins to lose faith in his

The book begins with the author’s Jewish community witnessing a different community being taken away by the hungarian police. “Crammed into cattle cars by the hungarian police, they cried silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were left crying. The train disappearded over the horizon. Hehind me, someone sighed, ‘What do you expect? That’s war…’ The depotees were quickly forgotten. Days went by and life was normal agian”(6). This quote demonstates how fast people are willing to move on and ignore obvious signs of their own oppression. If someone ignores something for long enough, it could eventualy turn into somehting horrible like the

“The Haggadah would have pride of place, but all around the walls would be Islamic manuscripts and Orthodox icons that would show how the people and their arts had grown from the same roots, influencing and inspiring one another.” (P. 35) People of the Book is a historical novel written by Geraldine Brooks in which Hanna, a rare book expert, is hired to conserve and analyze the Haggadah of Sarajevo, rescued during the Bosnian war. Hanna discovers multiple items in this book, such as an insect wing, a silver hair, and wine stains. As she discovers each artifact, stories are unraveled about those who left them. In each story there are examples of ethnic and religious differences; in each story they are handled differently.

“The Shawl” is a very devastating story centered on the Holocaust. It is a story of determination, survival, and sacrifice. It is based on the experiences of Rosa, Stella the niece, and Magda; Rosa’s daughter. Rosa lives to tell her story of the events surrounding her daughter’s death. What we have learned about the Holocaust, especially the violence makes the story realistic, tragic and compelling at the same time. The shawl becomes a symbol of survival, protection, and comfort for all three characters. There is violence depicted in this story in a few ways. The horror of the Holocaust is so painful to think about and this story reminds us and draws us in. Violence may be physical and can also be emotional due to the devastating events in our lives.

As a further means of separating the population into distinct groups, religion acts as a divisionary force between characters and cultures. There are two primary conflicting cultures represented in the novel that are the cause of religious differences: Sunnis versus Shi’ites and secularism versus religious fundamentalism. Similar to the discrimination based on ethnicity, the conflict based on religion is primarily exemplified through Assef and Hassan, who are Sunni and Shi’ite, respectively. As such, any justification for inclusion and exclusion of people not based solely on ethnicity could just be rationalized through differences of religion. With this prevalent culture present, the importance is in the author’s depiction of the “bleak hypocrisies of the Taliban period--the disgusting cruelties performed in the name of righteousness” as stated by David Denby in “Hard Life.” Through the

“High Holy Days” is a poem in which the author, Jane Shore, conveys the emergence of an innocent youth into a cruel and anti-Semitic world. It is told from a point of reflection on a childhood memory but as if it was presently occurring. This poem primarily focuses on Judaism along with the prejudice experienced by the Jewish community. The speaker is characterized as a child on the cusp of a transition in maturity and attitude. This plays a key role in understanding the text. While the speaker appears to be merely a child, no greater than thirteen-years-old, she is presented with feelings of great responsibility to lead her people and “defend them against the broken windows” (Shore 59) and “the spray-painted writing on the walls,” (Shore

Lastly, another situation in which the theme, abuse of power and bullying, is evidently portrayed is when society’s power is abused and bullies Hazaras. Racial conflict is common, especially in Kabul, when those

The Holocaust becomes the center of this. Whether it be at his Hebrew school, where Jewish history shaped not only the curriculum they learn. But, also as a collective identity shared by a new and contemporary Jewish generation. While still being connected to the past. This is a struggle for Mark, who does not even identify himself as Jewish for most of the story, He is continuously challenged with where to place himself in this new world, as a second-generation immigrant to Toronto. For Mark, being a young Latvian Jew is not easy.

Millions of people around the world are discriminated against, but Hazaras and Shias especially know the struggle of this, constantly being put at the bottom of the social class and knowing unfair treatment all too well. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the act of discrimination is portrayed throughout the novel and is the cause of many of the main events that occur in the novel. Hassan, a hare-lipped Hazara boy in the novel, feels the pain and torture of simply being who he was and endures the hardships of his ethnicity, but yet he never complains or wishes to change who he is, symbolizing his bravery. Therefore, discrimination and slander towards Hazaras in the novel gives a strong sense of unequalness among the two ethnicities, Pashtuns and Hazaras, and is not considered virtuous among societies today.

In his novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini depicts his homeland Afghanistan as a host to many different cultures and classes, such as Pashtun and Hazara, Sunni and Shiite, with this dichotomy of beliefs and attributes being powerful enough to shape diverse, sometimes negative relationships amongst the characters of the novel and their behavior to each other, as well as establish that individual’s identity. Each person interprets the impact of the role of belief and social status differently, while all living in the same setting, adding to their complexity and depth as a character in the novel with many different figures tied together by the same geographical and cultural conditions.