Everything Is Illuminated and Judaism

"Everything Is Illuminated," by Jonathan Safron Foer is a book about a Jew coming of age and Learning his identity as a Jew. I can relate to this in many ways. First, I am Jewish, just like Jonothan and I have to discover who I am as a Jew. Also, my family was uprooted form Europe by oppresion and came to America. Throughout the book, Jonothan goes through the journey of identifying himself as a jew. All Jews go through this same journey including myself. Like Jonothan, I have my doubts about god. But overall, because he's such a Jew, I can identify with Joseph. Although my family had to leave Russia because of the depretion, no direct family of mine was in the Holocaust. This book took me through the cruel curiosity being a descendent of a Holocaust victim would be. It makes me pity the main character. It also reminds me that my family was lucky. All in all, being Jewish is important to both Jonathan and me. So, it helped me relate with him.

Everything Is Illuminated: Coming of Age

     Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer features a character named Jonathan Safron Foer who expiriences the change of innocence to experience throughout his journey.  His journey is to find the town his descendants lived in.  He goes through the journey with a funny Ukrainian, his tour guide Alex. He may not be a teen in the book, but he's certainly still coming of age.  Alex leads him through weird and new circumstances and toughens as well as opens him up through experience.  Also, Jonathan learns to be misunderstood, which helps define himself as a man.

     At first Foer was unhappy and generally shocked about the gross car and Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.  I found him sort of snobby.  However, later he accepted these quarks as part of the adventure.  He turned into a nicer guy by hanging around rougher, stranger conditions.

     Jonathan learns to be proud of who he is.  At the begining, he seems held back and shy.  I think that people misunderstanding his culture made him proud of who he was.  For example, he fought hard explaining why and how he was a vegetarian to Alex.  He was not embarrassed, it was part of him.

     I am just about half way done with this book and I really like it.  Although it can be weird and at times extremely boring or confusing, its a very interesting book.  I look forward to reading the rest.

Facebook Buys Instagram: Essay

"Facebook to Buy Photo-Sharing Service Instagram for $1 Billion"  
By Jenna Wortham
New York Times


Essay Question: What is the purpose of this article and why is it important?


     The article, "Facebook to Buy Photo-Sharing Service Instagram for $1 Billion" By Jenna Wortham is important because it explains why Facebook is buying Instagram, a decision that is important to millions and describes the inspiring story of the shoot up company, Instagram.  It is about the purchase of Instagram by Facebook.


     This story is about something that millions of people care about, so this subject matter is more than just social networking.  As the article states, "(Instigram) has 30 million users who upload more than five million photos a day, even though it was available for only Apple devices."  This shows that Instagram is part of tons of people's daily lives and therefore, the decision and the coverage was important.  This article also covered many Instagram users reactions to the purchase.  Wortham wrote that many Instagram users "lamented the loss of what they saw as an alternative to Facebook and threatened to delete their accounts."  This shows that the article covered a crucial conflict in the social networking world.  


     Wortham describes the quite impressive and fast rise to the top of Instagram.  According to the article, the company was founded less than two years ago and started off with, "Just four employees, including its two co-founders."  This rise to the top is an example of the american dream, the type of story that can inspire others to pursue their dreams.


     I learned from this article the story of a cool start up and how much people care about it.  This article inspires me and makes me proud to be an American.  We have these two new companies, both started by  people in their twenties making a ton of money because of creativity, intelligence and timing.  So, this article is important not just because it inspires, or effects people's lives, but because it describes the bigger picture of the American dream.
     

Plagiarism

     The student clearly plagiarized in their blog post.  This is their fault, wrong and if unintentional, avoidable.  

     The student is at fault for plagiarizing.  They copied someone's words and pasted, without quoting or giving credit to the original author.  Whether they meant to or not, it is wrong.  An example of their plagiarism is that they copied two full paragraph's of the article "A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings": "Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can all relate to, and also one that most individuals feel comfortable and at ease with. This sky keeps the viewer's eyes moving about the painting, following the curves and creating a visual dot to dot with the stars. This movement keeps the onlooker involved in the painting while the other factors take hold. Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion."  This is a huge amount of text that was clearly just copied and pasted.  The student again is in the wrong.

     The student could have avoided plagiarism very easily.  They could have used a quote and credited the source.  They could have also paraphrased the source and granted it credit.  Lastly, they could have used specific details from the source and paraphrased them.  The student could have written something like;  "According to the article, "A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings," "Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can all relate to."  This way, the source is quoted and credited.  

    The student committed a crime by plagiarizing.  It's easy to avoid plagiarizing.  I will use these tools to help me keep avoiding plagiarizing in the future.

Good Blogs

     There were a lot of good 813 blog posts on Ms. Galang's blog, but some of my favorites were Gabby's and George's.  Gabby's response, "Glass Shatters," is about drug addiction in the book Glass and George's post is called "Irony in Romeo and Juliet" and as you might guess is about just that.  These responses are both different, but they are both very good.

     "Glass Shatters" is good because of its strong narrative, and its use of a lot of good key text evidence and good explanations.  In both body paragraph's she used a quote.  What really stood out though was that for both quotes she elaborated very well.  She did this so well, that I understood the quote even though I had not read the book.  For example, following a long quote that confused me at first she wrote, "What Kristina is making clear is that her real self is the smallest part and she is worried about getting caught and she thinks that going back to the “monster” which is meth  is stupid, but Bree doesn’t really care about anything, but when she’s high Bree is the dominant voice that Kristina has so she doesn’t really care about getting caught all she wants to do is enjoy what’s going to end up ruining Kristinas life."  This shows that Gabby helped the reader understand the importance of the quote because she told the backstory and summarized the quote, while telling the meaning of the quote in the book.  Gabby did a good job of incorporating text evidence and had a distinct voice in her writing.

    George's post made Romeo and Juliet, a very difficult text to get through quite interesting.  His post about the irony was very easy to read because of its good structure.  It is 5 paragraphs, with an intro, 3 body paragraphs and a conclusion.  I also like that George's conclusion and introduction are to the point and short.  George's entry was good mostly because of the way he structured it.

    These blogs inspire me to improve my posts in various ways.  Most importantly though, I will use a lot of quotes like Gabby and thoroughly explain them and structure my responses like George's response.

Much Ado About Nothing

Dear Friend,


     I got to see the off-broadway production Much Ado About Nothing.  The play wasn't too long and it was pretty enjoyable.  One thing that I really liked was the use of Jazz music and the roles of the musicians in the play.  They used a lot of dramatic, hyperbolic actions in the play.  The theme for the play is to take life as it comes.


     The use of jazz music goes along very well with the theme of the play.  The theme is just to enjoy life because all of this crazy stuff happens, but in the end, not much changes from the original set of events.  The jazz music presents that fun theme.  This is because of all of the often randomness of jazz, but it still sounds sweet.


     The play has a lot of intentional exaggerations.  The two most common are when the characters act like bulls when the word comes up and when Don Pedro throws down the table in anger.  Don Pedro's action is funny and gives the audience a good feel for his character and the amount of anger he has.  This intentional overacting makes the play sort of goofy and fun.  


    Overall, I recommend seeing this play.  It was only 90 minutes and it was well acted.  I am very happy we got to go there on a school trip.  

Sincerely,

Joshua Waldman

Capulet Drama

     We've been reading Romeo and Juliet for quite some time and what I find most interesting is the conflicts and issues that are in the Capulet House.  These issues came to front in scene 3 or act 1.  The issues of marriage, womens rights, and the idea of marriage without even really knowing a person.


     What is interesting is that Juliet's father was against the marraige with Paris and Lady Capulet was very strongly for it.  Getting married at my age seems odd, and especially to someone I didn't know.  I would think that Lady Capulet would understand that, but she didn't.  Juliet's dad was understanding and wanted to protect his daughter as I most certainly would try to.  Lady Capulet said that she was married and raised Juliet when she was even younger then Juliet.  This shows just how different things were for women then.  Their jobs were basically to raise their children, cook and clean.  This is why the idea seems inconceivable to me but would make sense at the time the play was written.


     Another thing that is weird is that it's not clear that Juliet even knew Paris when he approached her father and asked if he could marry her.  So, essentially, he wanted to marry her because of her looks and wealth.  Another weird thing is that Lady Capulet wanted her to get married to him, both so that she would grow up and have a family and because he was a man of such power and money.  The idea of marriage has also seemed to have changed over the years.  Less people get married because of economics and almost all people at the very least know the person they are marrying.  


     All in all, scene 3 shows how much things have changed.  This makes the play interesting because it shows the social elements of the times.  However, many of the same personalities and characters lived then and now.