Women And Jews By Simone De Beauvoir And Jean-Paul Sartre

Strong-willed, intelligent, and motivated are only some of the words we can use to describe Betty Friedan. Credited as being the mother of the second wave of feminism, Friedan was an influential women’s right activist during the twentieth century but her legacy has continued to strive well into the twenty-first century. Friedan is the author of a variety of books including The Feminine Mystique, which became a phenomenon because of its powerful message to women for self-exploration outside their traditional roles. This book helped to define Friedan’s role in the fight for women empowerment and equality. It evoked emotions in many women who agreed that they did not want to fulfil traditional roles, creating an atmosphere of change. She was also the cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), serving as its first president and also helped to create the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and the National Women’s Political Caucus. With these organizations, Friedan became the face of the women’s movement and encouraged women to take a stand against the pathological idealization of women by creating a sense of community

Europe’s Growing Anti-Semitism is written by Mike Ross, and was published on October 20, 2014. In this article, Ross explains the disturbing anti-Semitic acts that are taking place in Europe and the effects it is having on Jewish communities. For example, in France three Jewish children and a rabbi were murdered in a Jewish school, four people were shot in a Jewish museum in Brussels, and violent riots have emerged outside numerous synagogues in Europe. Due to these

Sitting in a comfortable leather chair on a cloudy January day, I sat in a house and interviewed Susan Gustavson, a life long Jew that is in her mid-fifties. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, where she got an MBA in marketing. She told me about her opinions on the Judaism.

Racial antisemitism was born in the Nineteenth Century when laws were passed in many European countries posing the Jewish people as second-class citizens, not receiving the same rights as others in society. While they had reached a level of religious emancipation in some countries, Judaism had become recognized as an ethnicity as well, and this ethnic difference from the Aryans therefore made them “inferior.” Pogroms began across Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s which resulted in

The article, The Cult of Womanhood: 1820 - 1860 written by Barbara Welter discusses the philosophy towards women in America during the mid 19th century. A set of demands and expectations based upon four principles: piety, purity, submission and domesticity were placed on women as well as certain behavioral expectations left 19th century women feeling guilty. It also left women feeling this way during the industrialization period as well as having a huge presence of incompatibility with society. Welter shares her viewpoint that the Cult of Womanhood was an attempt to preserve pre modern values in the industrial age. Men held a dominant place in society and continued to prevent new opportunities for women to explore. Narrow minded

Through the course of history, the Jewish people have been mistreated, condemned, robbed, even put to death because of their religion. In the Middle Ages, they were forced to wear symbols on their clothing, identifying them as Jews. The dates 1933 to 1945 marked the period of the deadly Holocaust in which many atrocities were committed against the Jewish people and minority groups not of Aryan descent. Six million innocent Jews were exterminated because of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” This paper will exhibit how Adolf Hitler used the three anti-Jewish policies written in history, conversion, expulsion, and annihilation to his advantage.

The most obvious and elementary instance in which gender analysis is relevant to the topic of Jewish deportation during the Holocaust is when gender is referenced explicitly. For example, the scene in Schindler’s List where female and male Jews are told to group on opposite sides of the street in preparation for transport to the Płaszów concentration camp is a clear invocation of gender to frame a depiction of deportation. However, in order for gender analysis to be constructive, it is necessary to also discuss the underlying power relations that gender subtly affects. Joan Scott addresses this concept directly when she asserts that ‘the implementation of Nazi policy in Germany’ was an example of power that was justified as ‘masculine’. Furthermore, Scott emphasises that oppressive actions against women by the state, such as the Holocaust, can ‘only be made sense of as part of an analysis of the construction and consolidation of power’. Using this broad framework of characterising gender as an essential element of power and politics, we can apply Scott’s theoretical structure to the Holocaust and glean insight that would otherwise be impossible to achieve under

While exploring the cycle as it applied to slavery, we examined Fields’ theory that oppression leads to feelings of inferiority as the ideology relates the racism historically back to slavery. However, one can look at the cycle in a very different context when applying it to the fear of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. In the African slave trade, the individuals who became slaves were captured and were the easiest targets for the Europeans. However, the Jewish people were resented by society for years prior to the Holocaust and already suffered prolonged oppression before the tragedy occurred. For example, rules that comprised the foundation of the Magna Carta were based on the premise of anti-Semitic principles (Magna Carta). The differences of the Jewish people, the rules they follow and the rules they did not, fostered resentment in society, which resulted in their inferior treatment and ultimate oppression. So in this example, resentment escalated into inferior treatment and then the cycle of oppression since the fear of difference was not the direct trigger for the oppression but rather the resentment and jealousy of the

At the foundation of Nazi ideology is a strict adherence to the racial purification of the ‘Aryan race.’ Nazi propagandists and racial fanatics created ways to limit the rights of people who were deemed racially inferior; the majority of such policies focused on solving the ‘Jewish Problem.’ In an effort to increase pressures on the Jewish population of Europe, the Nazi regime imposed laws and edicts to remove any legal rights of Jewish citizens. In order to purify the German race, the Nazi regime went a step further and implemented legislation to separate the Jewish and Aryan populations; a separation of these groups would provide a quicker way to racial purification. In the mid-1930s, laws, like the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, were enacted to inhibit marriage and sexual relations between people of Jewish and Aryan descent. This particular law focuses on the purification of German blood, the Jewish-German marriage policy and the display of Reich symbols. Looking at its historical context, however, we see that this law is only a small piece of the Nazi policies focused on the persecution of Jews.

For thousands of years, the Jewish People have endured negative stereotypes such as the "insects of humanity." As Sander Gilman pointed out, the Nazi Party labeled Jews as "insects like lice and cockroaches, that generate general disgust among all humanity" (Gilman 80).1 These derogative stereotypes, although championed by the Nazis, have their origins many centuries earlier and have appeared throughout Western culture for thousands of years. This fierce anti-Semitism specifically surfaced in Europe’s large cities in the early twentieth century, partially in conjunction with the growing tide of nationalism, patriotism, and xenophobia that sparked the First World

The hatred of Jews otherwise known as anti-Semitism is an ancient hatred that continued to develop and intensify over the course of two thousand years (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, June 2014). The foundation of anti-Semitism was solidified by Christian declarations that attributed Jewish adherents with responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, June 2014). Stereotypes and persecution quickly progressed, with the dispersal of Jews throughout European society regarded as an appropriate punishment for their ‘crimes’. Europe during the early centuries of the modern era was a society wherein religion was the basis of self-identity and public life. As Europe was predominately Christian, Jewish citizens were victimized through vicious stereotypes, exclusion from noble professions, scapegoating and countless other forms of oppression. Though the degree of mistreatment fluctuated over time, it was the transformation of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century from a religious hatred to a racial hatred that formed a much deeper and malignant type of Jewish animosity. This transformation was the result of widening acceptance of scientific concepts such as evolutionary theory. Through the support of Darwinian’s Theory of evolution, Social Darwinism and the notion

While the anti-feminist will happily find a place for the woman in his world, the same cannot be said about the anti-Semite and the Jew. Unlike other forms of hatred, the anti-Semite does not cast his foe as an to be conquered, but as a devious opponent only fit for extermination. De Beauvoir herself held that anti-Semitism was distinct from anti-feminism and racism, believing that for the anti-Semite, “the Jew is more an enemy than an inferior, and no place on this earth is recognized as his own; it would be preferable to see him annihilated.” (33) The Jew is not merely an object of derision, but part of a metaphysical force that seeks to corrupt and destroy society. Every single bad thing can be traced back to the Jews in one form or another. In the early twentieth century, Jews were somehow both the financiers

In the book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan brings attention to what she calls the feminine mystique, or “the problem that has no name”. Through the use of anecdotal narratives, her own personal experiences as a journalist, editor, mother, and the interviews of many women from different backgrounds in order to unveil the truth about the women of the 1950’s. The problem which sparked the second wave of feminism in the United States is one that focuses on the inequality between men and women and the undervaluing of women in both the social and private spheres. The women of the time gave up pursuing their passions, such as getting an education or careers in science or business in order to fit the image of the stereotypical stay-at-home mom whose main goal in life is to raise her children while providing a safe and comforting home for her husband. The Feminine Mystique, as she called it, was the idea of widespread unhappiness of women, despite the preconceived notion that women were happiest when they have a family. Throughout her work, she dives into many of the problems associated with the feminine mystique and builds a powerful concept of what would eventually be labeled feminism.

Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis.

Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex suggests that to resolve the tension between bad faith and authenticity, people must regard women as subjects and not objects. They must also collectively fight against the idea of womanhood in order to remain authentic to themselves.