week six

Reading the first article that dealt with Wasif Jawhariyyeh was extremely interesting to read because it gave a first person perspective mixed with historical context throughout. I was fascinating to read of things happening during the early twentieth century from a person seeing and experiencing these things for himself. Going through nearly every aspect of what society was like from education, culture, issues dealing with religion and music are all intertwined even more so then I could have ever imagined. Before the city was divided into four quarters it is always interesting to read about how Jerusalem used to be and how there may have even been some kind of mingling amongst all the different people in the city. To see the changes that happened once the British mandates were put in place seems saddening when dealing with issues of restriction to access of certain areas of the city. It was very interesting to read of different cultural and musical aspects of life that were popular back then.

Upon reading the second paper I liked how it started off by talking about just the specific words he was choosing to use in his essay and dealing with the word 'nativism'. It was interesting to show the different examples even though briefly from other regions of the world where there was some type of struggle with who was there first and how they are all sort of connected in certain aspects or another. I liked how Tamari wrote "Jerusalem became the arena of an intellectual circle that regarded the peasantry as the soul of the nation, the salt of the earth, uncontaminated by radical intrusions of technology and a Westernizing culture." This line for some reason just really stuck out to me in the writing. It was interesting how they viewed the Palestinian culture and what it meant to the history of Jerusalem. It was interesting to read of the different aspects of Palestinian culture and views on certain historical aspects of the region and why the people are the way they are. Also the issues dealing with modernization and the western ways seen as coming in and having influence are interesting. It was unusual for me to read about how the saints were also viewed and the cultural context that they held.