Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

I decided to do a little bit of research on the history of Israeli independence, and read the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which was issued on May 14, 1948. It was made official when the Jewish Peoples Council met in the Tel Aviv Museum. The British mandate over Palestine had just expired, leaving room for the Jewish people to create a safe haven, to establish a "home" especially after the holocaust and massacre of Jews. "This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home." The establish that the country will be a safe-haven for all, and that it will be a country for all races, religions and guarantee the freedom of everyone who lives there. It asks for the assistance from the United Nations to help build up the country, and it also asks for the assistance of the Arabs who inhabit the area as well in also building up the country's stability. The following is an expert from the declaration:

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

The conclusion of the declaration places their fate in the hands of "the Almighty" referring to God, and is signed by several members of the council.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I thought it was really interesting reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. After doing some background reading on Wikipedia, I discovered that the Rubaiyat is actually a collection of poems, dating back to about 1048 AD. The term "Rubaiyat" actually means quatrains which is the four line verses found throughout his collection. Quatrains are the most basic of poetry and many example can be found upon researching. In all of Khayyams quatrains, lines 1,2 and 4 rhyme, while line 3 doesn't. One of my favorite quatrains was the following (#35):

Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I lean'd, the secret of my life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur'd--while you live,
Drink!--for, once dead, you shall never return.

This is pretty much telling us to live life to the fullest because once it is gone, it's gone and there is no getting it back. I really try to follow that method as best I can, so I can get everything I possible can out of life.

The other quatrain that I really liked was # 72:

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help--for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

I just thought that this was an interesting analysis, seeing the somewhat mystical interpretation in other quatrains in the poem, I thought it was strange that Khayyam doesn't believe that there were any mystical qualities in the sky, and that it was just simply a physical object.

It was a little more difficult coming up with my own poems similar to Khayyam's. The following were personal creations:

Distance makes the heart grow fonder,
But my dear it's easy for hearts to wander
--Stay with me darling and remain true,
and it's this I promise, our love will not squander.

The dusk sets in over the crystal sea,
the white frosty sand below the lonely palm tree,
sparkles and glistens as the moon descends
soon the twinkling stars will be upon us, almost a guarantee.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

1001 Nights Cont....

I decided to write my paper on racial inequalities and prejudice in the stories that we had read in class. I really found some of my research to be quite interesting and learned a great deal about how Europeans viewed Middle East culture and some of the issues that sparked racial tension between the two groups. Some of this tension still is present today between Middle Eastern countries and the United States. The follow is an excerpt from the rough draft of my paper:

The infamous One Thousand and One Nights also presents several racial references. When King Shahryar’s younger brother catches his wife in bed with “a black cook of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime” he immediately executes them both. The question I find interesting is, had the man been white, would the same measures been taken. The plot thickens when King Shahryar’s own wife is caught in the same circumstance with “a big slobbering black moor.” It can be argued that the circumstances leading up to both wives execution was simply infidelity. Clearly, though, the issue of racial sexuality is truly more disgraceful than the affair alone. According to Katherine O’Sullivan’s review on Charles Stember’s book Sexual Racism, the “sexual self-image of black men is one of ‘impurity’ and inferiority.” This leads to the conclusion that by committing adultery with a black man, the wives are tainting themselves, which is a far greater disgrace than anything else imaginable. In the eyes of the kings, the only way to remove the stain from their reputation is by execution.

It was also interesting to read a few more stories from 1001 Nights as well.
The first one I read was The King's Daughter and the Ape. This has to be the most provocative story in the entire collection. It discusses the Sultans daughter, who has a sex addiction that can only be fulfilled by the black slaves. When her father discovers that she is keeping a black slave locked in her room, he plans to execute her. She escapes only to have he slave killed by a butcher who misunderstands her circumstance. He plans to replace the black man as her sex slave, but cannot perform at the level to fulfill her. He meets with an old woman and with a series of herbal remedies, they are able to fix the daughters sexual addiction. All in all the story was pretty bizarre and sexually explicit.

The other story I read was called The Miller and His Wife. This story was about a Miller who had an evil wife and a thing for the guy next door, who cannot stand her. The miller has a dream about where a pile of riches is buried, and tells his wife about it, making her promise to keep it a secret. The wife, in turn, tells the neighbor, hoping to win his favor. The two go and dig up the treasure, but greed overcomes the neighbor, and he kills the miller's wife, burying her where the treasure was. The next morning the miller comes out to where the ass rotates the mill wheel and tries to get him to move, but when he doesn't because he knows the millers wife is buried below him. The miller becomes enraged and kills the ass. He then discovers that his treasure is gone, his wife and ass are dead, and is saddened by all of it.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

One Thousand and One Nights

I thought the overall basis for the tale of One Thousand and One Nights was intriguing. The thought of one person telling a series of stories over the course of 1001 nights (close to 3 years) fascinates me. The introduction story The Story of King Shahryar and His Brother sets the scene for the remainder of the book. Both brothers catch their wives cheating, and kill them, and Shahryar, in response to all this, marries a virgin every night and kills her the following morning. Soon there are no virgins left and the daughter of his close advisor is used as his next victim. Instead she tells a story every night, concluding with a cliff hanger, forcing him to keep her alive for another day. What I find humerus is that he, who doesn't trust women, is in fact being outsmarted by one :)
I also found it interesting that both of the wives cheated with a "blackamoor". It would be curious to know if the kings would have responded differently to these situations, had the women involved themselves in affairs with Caucasian men instead. While the act itself is still wrong, I do believe that the kings would have looked down with less disdain, had the wives stuck to a similar race.

One of the other stories I choose to read was The Christian King's Daughter and the Moslem. This story was a bit confusing and the language was a little more difficult to understand than the other stories, but from what I understand, the Moslem traveler is able to heal the daughters ailment, but she dies while they make a pilgrimage to Mecca, where she is able to pray and fast.

The next story I read was The Three Unfortunate Lovers. I actually really enjoyed this story, and it had a romantic circular flow. The 3 young lovers all faces a sudden death, starting with one, and the other two pine away at the loss of love.

The Third story was the Tale of the Trader and the Jinni. This was a bit broken up because there are 4 separate parts to the story, but a Jinni takes a wealthy merchant's soul on the basis that the merchant killed the Jinni's son, and plans to kill him only allowing him the opportunity of one year to settle his final affairs. Each of the Shaykh's he meets before his death want part of his blood. It was a little confusing, but and interesting tale.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Analysis of Othello

The article Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor by Daniel Vitkus was a very intriguing article on the "Moor" Othello in Shakespeare's play. I found it interesting that the phrase "turning Turke" actually referred to a prostitute returning to the streets or the brothel. I liked the analysis that the word "turning" could be applied to Othello, a Christian soldier of dark skin, who turns into "an enraged murder", similar to "turning Turke." This does seem like a very racial and insensitive comment, but literature and analysis like this was very common in Shakespeare's time. Of course Othello would ultimately be the villain in Shakespeare's work, encouraged by the European fear of Middle Eastern overtake and domination.


I also thought is was intriguing that many European Christians believed that Moors were look upon as having skin "demonic black, burnt by hellfire and cursed by god." It seems that seventeenth century Christians were very uninformed of the Islamic religion and there were quite a few misunderstandings "reviled by Western Europeans" and was probably the cause for so much animosity in the past, and possibly still presently. Although there was much cause for alarm because of the barbaric attacks by African and Middle Eastern tribes, I believe that there was an excess of worry by much of the English community. One could possibly compare this to the present outlook on people of Middle Eastern descent, given the past six years of tension, terrorist attacks and war. I even catch myself sometimes judging a person based mearly on their skin or what they are wearing. Some would argue that this is good and others would argue that it is bad. I think that this is simply left up to interpretation, and in some cases, it could be a good thing, but probably more commonly that not, it is more of racial discrimination. Islam used to be "defined as a licentious religion of sensuality and sexuality." I find it interesting that today we think of it as almost completely opposite, representing a repressive outlook towards women and a overall lack of love, sex, and sensuality.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Othello

Othello was an interesting play. I was only able to read the first three acts of the play, but the idea of the story was that the title character is a Moor, who finds himself places in an environment of caucasion Christians. While the term "Moor", accoriding to Wikipedia, is a Greek word meaning "black" or "very dark" but doesnt necessarly refer to the Muslim religion. This word was actually originally used to refer to an individual of African or Arab decent. The thought of Othello involved in a marriage with a white woman was an out cry in the play, and Roderigo even refers to Desdemona and Othello as "an old black lamb tupping your white ewe" which I thought was a very crass and rude statement. It should only seem to be a given, then that the marriage between Desdemona and Othello was destine to fail, according to The Folger Shakespeare Library because there was such a difference in race, gender, background and culture. I tend to agree with this statement because there do have to be some similarties in a cultural sense for people to be compatable with each other. Marina Smiley comments in her article, How To Fight Cultural Differences In Marriage And Stay Happy, that cross cultural marriages can be very difficlut and more often time than, not can lead to failure. I think that the impulsiveness of their marriage was romantic, but it doesnt seem like they thought much beyond that, and didn't consider the consequences or impact that this could have much later on. It also seems that they rushed into things a little fast because otherwise there would be more trust between Othello and Desdemona.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

The crusades had quite an impact on the Middle East and the Islamic culture/religion. Islam and Islamic History in Arabia and The Middle East provided an in depth analysis on the crusades and the results from the conquests. Arab scholars look at the crusades as more of an irritation than anything else, and the crusaders were not very successful because of unfamiliar territory and hostile environment. Although the crusading armies were able to capture the holy city of Jerusalem, they were not successful, all-in-all, in converting the so called "barbaric" Muslims into Christians. In fact, Saladin, who proves to be quite and interesting character, is the While the long term effects of the crusades as far as a military stand point were unsuccessful, there was a lasting effect on trade, governmental relations and the integration of western culture into the Middle East. The Encyclopedia of the Orient also provides interesting information on the present effect of the Crusades today, claiming that,"the work that conservative Christians, led by Jerry Falwell, and extremist Muslims, led by personalities like Osama bin Laden do for provoking a religious war with Israel/Palestine as the epicenter is clearly a modern time crusade. The idea of jihad got a revival through the crusades. As the Christians fought a holy war against the Muslims, captured the 3rd holiest Muslim city and even attacked Medina and Mecca during a campaign. " It is interesting how similar the current war we are dealing with in the Middle East is very similar to the Crusade conquests that occurred 1095.


The Decameron was an interesting piece of literature. While there was a great deal of description and thought behind Novel IX, the language and grammer used made it a bit difficult to read, and I found myself wandering off in different directions while I read it. The honor of Saladin is similar to the wikipedia article we read, and he is quite the noble knight, allowing Messer Torello to be reunited with his wife only days before she is to be remarried. The tale is a bit of a fanatsy, involving black magic, but can be linked to many modern day love stories in that the man comes back to save the one he loves.