Erezology.: Essay Revised: Give me feedback!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Essay Revised: Give me feedback!

In the midst of Workshop, I have decided to re-examine my plans for college. Currently, I am differed from Goucher and College of the Atlantic. I was leaning towards COA, becuase I am passionate about enviornmental studies. However, during workshop I have realized how important it is to me that my ideals of Judaism, education and involvement in Habonim Dror is continued for the next few years. At COA, I would not have the chance to do all these things. I have realized that Kalamazoo College is a place where I can carry out these ideals that mean so much to me...So, here is my essay I have been working on. By no means is the finished, but I would like so feed back.

Just a few miles down the road from where I grew up is the city of Detroit. The public school system is in a severe deficit, a situation that harshly affects students, and their learning environment. This is just one example of how those with a lower economic status are disadvantaged from a young age. As a result a culture of individualism is created, which is detrimental to the cohesiveness of our society. We put too much emphasis on “I,” and not enough on “we.” We are too caught up in satisfying our own personal desires, while others’ basic needs are not met. While its true that Capitalistic ideals lead to wonderful achievements, in our society we value individual achievements over interpersonal relationships. As a result, people of low socio-economic status are left behind, making it difficult to operate as a society.
I am dedicated to improving our society. I aspire to exemplify values such as community, respect, and the equality of human worth on a daily basis. Not to say that our current society fails to do this, but if everyone made a conscious effort to carry out these values, the “we,” would naturally begin to replace the “I.” Capitalistic ideals create a world where we judge people based on the type of car they drive, and how they can serve us. According to the Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas, “When I do not acknowledge the other as another and as worthy of love I am unconsciously and unintentionally legitimizing him being exploited, and oppressed” (translated from Hebrew). Even if I don’t actively exploit someone, if I do not view him or her as a whole person, I am contributing to his or her exploitation. I demand that we stop viewing each other as a sum of possessions and abilities, and begin forming relationships based on character, and mutual respect. I aspire daily to realize this vision.
I currently live in a kvutza. Literally, this word means “group” in Hebrew; however, it has taken on an entirely new meaning in my life. Kvutza is the closest structure to the aforementioned values; I live communally with 18 other individuals, sharing everything from money to toothpaste to feelings. We make decisions through group meetings, where every individual presents their feelings and experiences regarding the topic at hand. One such meaning occurred, when we became concerned that our excessive use of vulgar language contradicted our collective value of the equal respect of all people. Previously, we had discussed how our word choice reflected the values in which we believed. By using vulgar language, we were creating gender stereotypes, and degrading individuals. When we revisited the topic, we re-examined our values, and the ways in which our word choices reflected our values. We reached a consensus that our vocabulary did not properly represent our values, and we decided to implement a change. We decided to remove particularly offensive words from our vocabulary. When individuals break this rule, others around must make it their responsibility to address the mistake.
My experiences in my kvutza have given me a unique outlook on interpersonal relationships. Through the exploration of collective issues regarding money, feelings, behavior and many other things, I have developed strong relationships with the members of my kvutza, I have learned their story, and they have learned mine. On a daily basis, values such as community, respect and equality are practiced, creating an intimate atmosphere. These experiences have helped me develop my vision for society, and I look forward sharing my visions with my peers at Kalamazoo College.

This is not finished, but give me feedback! erezzzzzzzzzz@gmail.com

1 comment:

Avi said...: Kvutzaקבוצה is from the Hebrew word A group,
Lekabetz לקבץ is to bring things together.
Kibutz קיבוץis also from the same root, "togetherness"
box / cell משבצת
all the kvutza is in one box.
The Kibutz failed in Israel, why? many members wanted to get out of this box and check their own success base on their own ability, another reason was economic failer, when the Kibutz could not make enough money they could not survive, the main problem in those environments that the people that work extra hard are not being recognized and the lazy ones benefiting from the hard work of there friends, which make many members of the group upset.
United States with the capitalist system became the place that people from all over the world want to come to, the freedom for individuals in the USA anable them to develop amazing things like this internet and this Blog all developed in capitalistic society!
If you work hard you succeed, if you are a lazy bones you will have a problem!
I do understand your points on making sure to look at every person not base on how much he has, but look how good he is and how many good things he is doing to help this world become a better place to leave in.; December 10, 2009 at 8:19 PM

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The Secret of the youth movement: By Zivia Lubetkin.

"The Zionist pioneer-youth movements took on the responsibility of all Jewish public life, a bit too late perhaps, during the most difficult days. I believe that one does not have to probe too far to find the answer. It would be wrong, painfully wrong to assume that the resistance displayed by the youth during the stormy days of destruction was the response of a few individuals, or Yitzhak, or Zivia, or Mordechai, or Frumka. We have lived and still live with the conviction that our fate would have been very different had we not been members of the Movement, if we had not observed the values that it gave us from childhood.

This is the real secret of the Movement's strength. The movement always knew how to demand everything from its members. The Movement's goal has always been to educate a new kind of man, capable of enduring the most adverse conditions and difficult times while standing up for the emancipation of our people, of the Jew, of mankind. It was our Movement education which gave us the strength to endure.

I don't know if I succeeded in describing how much we tried to live up to those values. I did mention how we were almost obsessed at the time with preserving the unblemished personal morality of each of our members as individuals, and of the movement as a whole.

What gave us this moral strength? We were able to endure the life in the ghetto because we knew that we were a collective, a movement. Every other Jew faced his fate alone, one man before the overpowering, invincible enemy. From the very first moment until the bitter end, we stood together, as a collective, as a movement, a community of people who cared about each other, who shared ideas and values in common, made it possible for each of us to do what we did. "

Glossary:

Epic: Workshop slaying for something along the lines of really really cool, incredible, amazing, etc...
Borris: Landlord
Ideology: Critique:Our criticism of our reality. What do we think are the most important problems to solve? What do we see in our community which we most want to improve?->Vision:Our ideal reality. How do we think things should be? What do we think is right for our community/country/world? Why? (Global ex: Peaceful relations. Community example: RIch Jewish identity.)->Method/Praxis: How do we get from point A to point B? Global Example: Change the way people relate to each other violently or by peace and dialogue education, while simultaneously demonstrating outside the embassies of warring countries, insisting that they stop their violent behavior. Community ex: Weekly educational meetings for Jewish youth about their history, language, religion, culture, land and people, while simultaneously being active in getting Jews to live in and develop a Jewish state.
Movement: A Tnua/movement is a group of people who share such an ideology and try to realize it in reality, (Hagshama.)
Habonim Dror's past Hagshama: HD's Hagshama has resulted in the building and development of about 50 kibbutzim around Israel. The following are some which have been built and developed by HDNA, HDUK, and HDNL: Kfar Blum, Mayaan Baruch, Kfar Hanassi, Ami'ad, Yizreel, Bet Ha'emek, Gesher Haziv, Mevo Hama, Tuval, Gezer, Kvutzsat Yovel, Kvutsat Ogen, Kvutsat Aseef.
Dugma Yeshit: An embodiment if who you are, what you believe in. Having your actions represent who you are. With that said, its your responsibility to be a dugma and set an example of who I am. Above all, Dugma yeshit is living up to your ideals.
Kvutza: A group of individuals who live and work together who provide a support system for one another. The role of the kvutza in HD is to challenge, support and push each individual. The Kvutza I am part of is GnG, standing for Gill and Gozal. (This is only temporary until we choose a new name.)
Madrich: The litteral translation from the hebrew word, derech, is "way." The madrich in the kvutza, (GIll and Gozal for us.) helps monitor the kvutza's growth and pushes each individual. The madrich shows chanichim the way to be a productive human being.
Chanich: From the hebrew word chinuch, which translates to education. Its the chanich's roleto learn and become educated, as well as to educate the madrich, and make a mutual partnership the two where each person leans from the other. Just becuase you are a madrich doesnt mean you cant learn.
Peula: A discussion ran and facilitaterd by a madrich, or rakaz. Done in the style of informal education to ensure that unique discussion are created and so that there is no hierarchy.
Shutaf: Partner
Sicha: Discussion.
Shiyur: Daily class ran by a rakaz. Generally done in peula format.
Rakaz: Hebrew word defined as coordinator. The rakazim on workshop coordinate the peulot we have, as well as ligistical arrangements. Also do things such as coordinate avodah and siyurim.
Yom Kvutza: A day where the madrichim run intense peulort, or fun activities in order to make the chanichim in the kvutza gain better insight to one another, think about things on a new level, and to create a more comforting enviornment in the kvutza.
Messima: Translated to "mission," However in our lives it refers to our mission of serving Israeli communities through work with Hanoar Haoved V'Halomed. G&G messimot are in Cholon, 2 in Yaffo, and one in Givat Olga.

Inspirational Quotes:

"We had one weapon-

the great ideal,

readiness and devotion."

Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman.

“And when you, O human, will return to Nature, that day your eyes will open, you will stare straight into the eyes of Nature and in its mirror you will see your image. You will know…that when you hid from Nature, you hid from yourself…We who have been turned away from Nature – if we desire life, we must establish a new relationship with Nature.”-A.D Gordon.
"Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly and n large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function.
What is the outcome? Moderen man is alienated from himselt, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investmet which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relationships are essentialy those of alienated automatons, each bringing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in though, feeling or action. While everybody tries to be as close as possile tp te rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human seperateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers many palliatives whilch help people to be conciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch as the routine alone does not succceed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore, by the satisfactions of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the piture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, welll clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men."
-Erich Fromm.
"Under capitalism man is controlled by a pitiless code of laws which is usually beyond his comprehension. The alienated human individual is tied to society in its aggregate by an invisible umbilical cord-the law of value. It is operative in all aspects of his life, shaping its course and destiny.
The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller-whether or not it is true-about the possibilities of success.
The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such a magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make people in general see this...
In any case the road to success is pictured as one beset with perils but which, it would seem, and individual with the proper qualities can overcome to attain the goal. The reward is seen in the distance; the way is lonely. Further on it is a route for wolves; one can succeed only at the cost of the failure of others.
I Would now like to try to define the individual, the actor in this strange and moving drama of the building of socialism, in his dual existence as a unique being and as a member of society.
I think it makes the most sense to recognize his quality of incompleteness, of being an unfinished product. The sermons of the psat have been transposed to the present in the individual consciousness, and a continual labor is neccessary to eradicate them. The process is two-sided : On the one side, society acts through direct and indirect education; on the other, the individual subjects himself to a process of conscious self-education.
The new society being formed has to compete fiercly with the psat. The latter makes itself felt in the consciousness in which the residue of an education systematically oriented towards isolating the individual still weighs heavily, and also through the very charecter of the transitional period in which the market relationships of the past still persist. The commodity is the economic cell of capitalist society; so long as it exists its effects will make themselves felt in the organization of production and, consequently, in consciousness..."
-Che Guevera.
"There are three principles in a man's being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say."-Martin Buber.
" The true Chalutz is a union of the emancipation of the individual and the emancipation of the nation. For the first time since the Jewish people were exiled, there is a resolution to the problem of the Jewish nation. The resolution comes in the form of a new being, a new Jewish person."-Martin Buber.
"There can be no true education if it is not permeated by a central idea. In its everyday life, of work and creation, our youth is nourished from the central idea of the new Jewish history. From it they draw their strength and mission."-Berl Katzelson.

Insipirational Zionists:

Nahman Syrkin: Born in Belorussia, Nahman Syrkin;s early Jewish education was provided by private tutors. WHen the family moved to minsk in 1884, he went to a Russian high school. He joined the Hovei Zion there, while also maintaining contact with Russian revolutionary circles. In 1888, he was arrested, after which he went to London and the Berlin, where he stuied psychology and philosophy. At the age of 19, he began writing on both academic and Zionist subjects. Syrkin tried supporrting himself and his family by writting, but eventually gave up and returned to pillosophy, publishing his doctoral thesis in Bern in 1903. A leader of the Socialist ZIonists at the First Zionist Congress, Syrkin was also an early sponor of the concept of the Jewish National Fund, and submitted a resolution to this effect at the Second Zionist Congress in 1898. Syrkin was banishe from Germany in 1904, spent some time in Paris and, after the 1905 revolution, went to Russia where he continued to work with the Zionist-Socialists, as they called themselves. He emigrated to the United States in 1907, eventually joining the Poalei Zion and returning to the Zionist Organization. He remained the leader of this American Poalei Zion until his death. In 1919, Syrkin was a member of the American Jewish delegation to the Versailles Peace Confrence which followed the end of WW1. The same year, he was the key figure in the World Poalei ZIon Conference in Stockholm, which assigned him the task of heading a study comission to visit Palestine to draw up a plan for mass cooperative settlement. Returning to the U.S, he intended to settle in Palestine, but died suddenly of a heart attack. In 1951, his remains were moved to Kibbutz Kinneret along with other founders of Labor Zionism.
Aaron David Gordon: A.D. Gordon was born in 1856 in Podolia, Russia to a pious family who were related to the magnate Baron Horace Guenzburg. After his marriage, Gordon was given responsibility for the management of a large tract of land which was rented out for farming. However, after the lease ran out in 1903, Gordon looked for new employment. Whilst he had been involved in Hovevei Zion there was little expectation that he would emigrate to Eretz-Israel and become an agricultural laborer especially given his relatively advanced age forty-seven. Nonetheless, Gordon decided to come to Eretz-Israel and begin a life of agricultural labor first in Petah Tikvah, later in Rishon Le-Zion and finally making his home in Degania, the first of the kvutsot. It should be remembered that Gordon had been a white collar worker all his life and had no experience of agricultural labor. However, he believed that physical effort on the land would not only bring about his personal redemption but also that of the Jewish people. He attributed pioneer work a semi-religious status, arguing that it created an organic interrelationship between the man, the land and culture. Gordon became the inspiration for a generation and more of Labor Zionists who saw in his example a way to personal and national fulfillment. A number of youth movements were influenced by his teachings and one, Gordonia, took his name as the rallying call for their work. Gordon died in 1922 and was buried in Degania where he had lived during his final years.
Moses Hess; Father of Socialist Zionism: Born in Bonn, Hess remained there to be educated by his orthodox grandfather, when his father moved to Cologne for business reasons. At age 14, he joined his father in Cologne. Hess studied Philosophy at the University of Bonn in 1837-1839, but did not graduate. Hess helped found the first socialist daily newspaper in cologne, and became its paris correspondent at the end of 1842, moving to Belgum in 1845 where he was active in communist activities, and returning to paris in 1848. In 1849, he took refuge in Switzerland. Two years later he moved back to Belgum, and in 1853, he moved back to Paris where he lived the remainder of his life. After his fathers death in 1851, Hess' inheritance provided the basis for an independent lifestyle, including marriage to his Christian companion. He lived in Germany from 1861-1863, where he published his first work "Rome and Jerusalem." a classic Zionist theory. At the end of 1863, he returned to Paris where he contributed to a number of Jewish and other publications. He was also the Paris correspondent for several socialist newspapers in the U.S and Germany. A Prussian subject, Hess was expelled from France at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war. He moved to Belgum, but returned to Paris after the war, began another philosophical work, and died there. According to his wishes, he was burried in the Jewish cemetery in Deutz near Cologne. In 1961, his remains were moved to Kibbutz Kinneret.
Ber Borochov: Borochov: Born in Ukraine, Borochov was educated in a Russian high school. A good student, he was attracted by the revolutionary socialist trends of the time. Like ost Jewish high school graduates, he was denied the chance to study at a Russian university. He was largely self educated, and spoke several languages. In 1901, his interests in Jewish problems led him to establish the Zonist Socialist Workers Union. Active in Jewish self-defense, the organization was opposed by both the Russian Social Democrats and some of the Zionist leaders who disapproved of the combination of Zionism and Socialism. During the controversy about the possibillity of setting Jews n Uganda, Borochov joined with Menahem Ussishkin in opposing any territory other than Eretz Yisrael. At the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905), Borochov led a faction of the Poale Zion delegates who opposed the uganda option. At the Eigth Zionist Congress, two years later, he was instrumental in the withdrawl of Russian Poalei Zion from the Zionist Organization. From then until the begining of WWI, he publicized the aims of the World Union of Poalei Zion in Western and Central Europe. In 1914, Ber Borochov arrived in the United States, where he was the spokesman for the American Poalei Zion and for the World and American Jewish Congress movements. When the Russian Revolution began, he returned to Russia and helped formulate the demands of the Jewish people for the postwar world order. He was intensely involved in public activities leading up to the October Revolution. In August 1917, he addressed the Russian Poalei Zion Conference and called for socialist settlement in Eretz Yisrael. Borochov was on a speaking tour on behald of Poalei Zion when he contracted pneumonia and died in Kiev. In 1963, his remains were reinterred in the cemetery at Kibbutz Kinneret, alongside the other founders of Socialist Zionism.
Theodor Herzl: The father of modern Political Zionism., born in Budapest in 1860. Herzl first encountered the anti-semitism that would shape his life and the fate of the Jews in the twnentieth century while studying a the uniersity of Vienna. (1882). Later, during his stay in Paris as a Journalist, he was brought face to face with the problem. At the same time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue, and wrote a drama, the Ghetto, in 1894, in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as solutions. He hoped that the Ghetto would lead to debate and ultimately to a solution, based on mutual tolerance and respect between Christian and Jews.

Erezology.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Essay Revised: Give me feedback!

1 comment:

Analytics

The Secret of the youth movement: By Zivia Lubetkin.

About Me

More Workshop Blogs/funny blogs/Inspirational blogs:

The Kvutz: G'n'G

Glossary:

Influential Books Thus far.

Important Websites:

Blog Archive

Seminar Calender:

Inspirational Quotes:

Insipirational Zionists:

Boneh Gan!!!