 | | | | Bread alone.(Travel)(Short Story): An article from: World Literature Today |  | Author: Adina Hoffman
Brand: The Gale Group
Category: Book
Buy New: $5.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (1 reviews)
Sales Rank: 4340769
Format: Html
Language: English (Published)
Media: Digital
Pages: 7
ASIN: B0008GF376
Publication Date: January 1, 2004
Release Date: July 31, 2005
Availability: Available for download now
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Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1928 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Bread alone.(Travel)(Short Story)
Author: Adina Hoffman
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 78 Issue: 1 Page: 33(3)
Article Type: Short Story
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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| Customer Reviews:
Bias Alone September 2, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
In her article, Bread Alone, Ms Hoffman longs for the old days when she could roam East Jerusalem comfortably, and is saddened at her current inability to do so because of the "matsav" (situation). She neglects to mention that the "matsav" was an unleashing of Arab terror on Israeli civilians, murderous and calculated, wreaking havoc on countless lives. But she skims over that, proclaiming how safe she feels in Arab East Jerusalem. That's because the Arab terrorists were targeting Jews, not because the Arab world is such a nice, "safe" place.
Ah, but she does mention an attack. She records some teenage Jewish boys purchasing cigarettes and bread from an Arab store owner in East Jerusalem. Their manner is rude, they have poor eating manners, and they speak Hebrew too loudly. Since they are Sepharadim, she goes on to describe the teenagers as, "the kind who call us AshkeNazis." 'The kind'? That is a prejudicial statement. I resided in Israel for 20 years, among many Sephardi neighbors, and never heard this phrase.
She compares the teenagers to Cossacks. But is there an equivalence? "...the Cossacks massacred a huge number of Jews during the years 1648-1649. The precise number of dead may never be known, but estimates range from fifty thousand to several hundred thousand Jews killed: 300 Jewish communities were totally destroyed." (Source: Wikipedia)
There is no equivalence between Cossacks and rude teenagers who pay in full for their cigarettes and bread before making an awkward retreat. To make such a comparison is to minimize the horrendous suffering caused by the pogroms.
That the author should portray their behavior as an assault worthy of understandably provoking the Arab store owner to violence is incredible indeed. How could he be blamed, she wonders, for not differentiating between Jews should he strike violently out in response to rude kids? He could indeed be blamed, becasue that would be a bigoted, violent, harmful act. But Adina Hoffman herself is comfortable using prejudicial imagery, and cannot blame others who do so, even if moved to violence.
A web search of Adina Hoffman and husband Peter Cole's writings reveals little awareness of or sympathy for Jewish victims of Arab terror. Why? She can register outrage at the rudeness of teenage boys, why not outrage at terror? She thus turns the focus away from the terrible suffering caused by the "matsav" - the terror attacks - and puts the spotlight on the suffering of a storekeeper at the hands of - rudeness. Nevermind about murder - let's be horrified by Jews who speak Hebrew too loudly in the presence of Arabs! Her position is invalidating, dismissive - a painful read indeed for one touched by terror.
Not once in this essay does Adina Hoffman talk to any of these characters. She does not ask the storekeeper how he feels, nor take the boys aside and talk with them a little - nothing. Her assumption that the Arab storekeeper may be moved to violence is based on - on what? On the fact that he is an Arab? Does Ms. Hoffman herein imply that Arabs are naturally violent? How about another possibility - if Ms Hoffman would set aside her projections and LISTEN to people, she may find that they do not quite fit them into the stereotypes in which she poetically, and politically, places them.
Additionally, this portrait is a very unlikely one. For Jewish teenagers to loudly hang out in East Jerusalem at the height of the onslaught of Arab terror would be unusual indeed. When reading Adina Hoffman's work, it may be wise to question it. Should the story be factual, then a little understanding of self-destructive behavior would have prodded this author to consider that these boys must have been VERY troubled to risk their safety as they (allegedly) did. But this consideration would have been underlining these boys' humanity, and then where would Ms. Hoffman turn for her much needed stereotyping?
Remember, this was a time in which Israeli Jews were in fear for their lives on a daily basis, and Arabs were not.
Ms Hoffman glosses over current Jewish suffering as a result of Arab terror, turning the spotlight away from an issue that urgently needs attention. She is sympathetic to an Arab storekeeper who (she assumes) just might be moved to ethnic violence in the face of - rude teenagers. Ms Hoffman appears to be in the service of a revisionist intellectual machine that props up Arab claims while minimizing Jewish claims - and Jewish suffering - both historical and current.
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