4.) Transfer zu The Assistant: L-S-Gespräch (20 Minuten)
4.1. Didaktisch-methodische Vorüberlegungen:
Im Vorfeld der Unterrichtsstunde war nicht schon bekannt, was als Thema in dieser Doppelstunde behandelt wird. Dagegen wissen die SchülerInnen zu dem Zeitpunkt dieser Unterrichtsstunde aber schon, dass sie in naher Zukunft den Roman The Assistant behandeln werden, dessen vollständige Lektüre zu einer der nächsten Stunden als Hausaufgabe aufgegeben wurde. Daher ist es möglich, dass ein oder einige SchülerInnen schon eine erste Parallele zwischen dem Amerikanischen Traum und den Zielen der Charaktere wie Morris Bober oder Frank Alpine ziehen. Selbst wenn der Roman von den SchülerInnen oder einigen SchülerInnen noch nicht komplett gelesen wurde, ist auch nach der Lektüre der ersten Kapitel, schon eine erste Stellungnahme zu einer Verbindung zwischen den gerade behandelten Themen und The Assistant möglich. Sollten also Bezugspunkte zu dem Roman genannt werden, sind sie von der/dem LehrerIn wiederum auf einer Folie zu fixieren, um die ersten Eindrücke mit den Ergebnissen einer späteren genauen Analyse vergleichen zu können.
Wenn spontan keine Verbindungen zum baldigen Unterrichtsthema The Assistant hergestellt werden, liegt es an der/dem LehrerIn anzuregen, über eine mögliche Verbindung zwischen dem Amerikanischen Traum und dem Schicksal der Romanfiguren in The Assistant nachzudenken. Von den SchülerInnen wird an dieser Stelle nicht erwartet, dass sie konkrete Textstellen benennen können, um Parallelen zu dem Roman zu belegen. Es soll lediglich festgestellt werden, ob und wenn ja welche Bezugspunkte die SchülerInnen sie sehen. Sie sollen aus ihrer Erinnerung spontan ihre Eindrücke äußern.
Die Beiträge sollen wiederum weitestgehend unkommentiert aufgenommen werden, da sie nur als erster Einstieg dienen, dann aber der Bezug des American Dreams zu The Assistant zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt durch konkrete Textarbeit- und analysen vertieft werden soll. Damit spätere Rückbezüge zu den ersten Einschätzungen der SchülerInnen möglich sind, sollen die Ergebnisse auf einer Folie fixiert werden.
4.2.) Erster Transfer zu The Assistant unter der Fragestellung:
If you consider the novel The Assistant you are just reading, can you think of any connection between the idea of The American Dream, as we have just described it, and this novel?
Erwartetes Schülerverhalten:
+ I can remember that Morris Bober had very high expectations when he came to America. He wished that in the so-called "land of opportunity" he would also become successful and happy. Thus, he wanted the American Dream to come true for himself.
+ Morris had hoped for success in America but when this success did not materialize he became very frustrated with his life. He tried to be good at something by all means but he failed again and again (business is low, nagging wife, partner cheated on him).
For him The American Dream seems to have turned into a nightmare.
+ Although Helen is from a poor social background, she is very ambitious. She wants to achieve something in life, she wants to get a "proper" college education, she wants to gain social prestige. She has a lot of dreams. She envisions these dreams to come true...
III) Doppelstunde
Thema: Jewishness und Jewishness in The Assistant
1.) Einstieg/ Erarbeitung:
A Four Jewish immigration waves
alternativ:
a) Arbeit anhand eines Lexikoneintrags
b) Gruppenarbeit
ergänzend oder alternativ
B Jewish religion/traditions (Siehe dazu die Ausführungen von Gesine Jost)
a) Arbeit anhand eines Lexikoneintrag (Lexikoneintrag: siehe Anlage 3):
Eintrag "Jews" im Dictionary of American History. (4)
1.1.) Didaktisch-methodische Vorüberlegungen:
Die Arbeit an einem Lexikonartikel stellt in mancherlei Hinsicht eine gute Abwechslung zu dem "traditionellen" Unterrichtsmaterial dar. Die Texte, die in Lehrbüchern verwendet werden, sind oft speziell für den Lehrwerkeinsatz konzipiert oder zumindest abgewandelt bzw. annotiert worden. Im Gegensatz dazu ist ein Lexikoneintrag ein authentischer Text, mit dem auch der native speaker umgeht. Die Diskussion von dieser Art Text im Unterricht gibt den Oberstufenschülern Selbstsicherheit im Umgang mit der Zielsprache Englisch, da sie die gleichen Texte "bewältigen", wie es Muttersprachler tun. Es ist also davon auszugehen, dass die Arbeit am Lexikonartikel motivierend für die SchülerInnen sein wird, obwohl sie sicherlich einige Vokabeln mehr als üblich nachschlagen oder aus dem Kontext erschließen müssen. (Sollte des Niveau des Leistungskurses unterdurchschnittlich sein, wäre eine zusätzliche Annotierung des Lexikonartikels hilfreich.)
Der Eintrag zu Juden im Oxford Companion to American History ist auch deswegen für den Unterrichtseinsatz geeignet, weil der Text nicht zu umfangreich ist. Im Sinne eines Lexikoneintrages, werden hier in komprimierter Form die wichtigsten Informationen zu den jüdischen Immigrationswellen in die USA gegeben. Die Informationen werden systematisch dargeboten, und die Sprache ist klar und präzise. Es ist daher sinnvoll, die Aufgabenstellung allgemein zu gestalten, da die Systematisierung von den Schülern in Orientierung an den Aufbau des Lexikonartikels selbst vorgenommen werden kann.
Die zwei Spalten des Eintrages sollten vorab von der/dem LehrerIn am Rand durchnummeriert werden, so dass spätere Textverweise schnell und genau gegeben werden können.
Diese Aufgabe kann auch als Hausaufgabe aufgegeben werden, da die SchülerInnen sehr gut selbstständig mit diesem Lexikoneintrag arbeiten können. Außerdem bedeutet es eine Zeitersparnis, falls man die Unterrichtssequenz etwas straffen möchte.
1.2.) Aufgabe:
Collect all necessary information on the Jewish immigration into the USA!
4 Jewish immgration waves
1st wave: Sephardic (Spanish-Portuguese) Jews, before 1840 (33)
- first arrived at New Amsterdam in 1654 (2)
- 1658: first synagogue in Newport (6)
- at the outbreak of the revolution: 2000 Jews, scattered throughout the colonies (14f)
-small communities with an elite of merchants and bankers and a majority of artisans (15-17)
-last legal limitations on the full political equality of the Jews were removed in 1868 (26-29)
2nd wave: Ashkenazic (German) Jews, 19th century (32f)
- geographically dispersed (50)
- assumed new entrepreneurial roles (51)
- religious communities were not so rigidly disciplined (54f)
-> introduced Reform Judaism, tends towards complete assimilation into community life (61-63)
- 1825-80: large wave from the German ghettos (36f), mostly for economical, social and political reasons (39)
3rd wave: Eastern European (mostly Russian and Polish) Jews, after 1880 (35f)
- fled from Czarist persecution in Russia and Romania (69f)
- beliefs: ranging from rigid orthodoxy to militant secularism (70f)
- became part of the proletariat (72)
- were active in the labor movement, socialist parties (75f)
- brought with them: Yiddish language, Jewish scholarship and strong interest in Jewish homeland and traditions (77-82)
- rapidly assimilated into American life during the time between the two World Wars, mainly joined the middle-class (83-88)
4th wave: European Jews, after 1930 (100)
- fled from Nazi persecution (99f)
- joined Conservative Jews who, at that time, went through a period of religious and cultural awakening (90)
- after 1945: survivors of the Nazi regime immigrated
Jewish population in 1965: 5.585.000, located chiefly in and around New York City
b) Gruppenarbeit zu einem Text
1.1.) Didaktisch-methodische Vorüberlegungen:
In der im folgenden geplanten Gruppenarbeit sollen sich die SchülerInnen exemplarisch jeweils mit einer der drei großen Immigrationswellen in die USA vor den 30er Jahren dieses Jahrhunderts auseinandersetzen und dazu einige Fragen beantworten. Dazu wurden Auszüge aus mehreren Kapiteln von C. Bezalel Sherma: The Jew within American Society zusammengestellt, die sich dazu eignen, über die an dieser Stelle wichtigen Punkte zu Jewishness in the USA Auskunft zu geben.
Die vierte große Immigrationswelle ab den 30er Jahren von deutschen Juden, die unter den Verfolgungen des Naziregimes litten, wurde ausgeklammert, da sie als background knowledge für The Assistant irrelevant ist und zudem zu einem anderen Zeitpunkt sicher für deutsche SchülerInnen eine detailliertere gesonderte Betrachtung interessant sein könnte. Da die Ausschnitte zu den ersten drei Immigrationswellen schon eine gewisse Länge haben, erschien es sinnvoll, die Untersuchung auf diese Weise inhaltlich, und damit auch zeitlich, einzuschränken und so für den Unterrichtseinsatz praktikabel zu machen.
Die im folgenden geplante Gruppenarbeit eignet sich zum Unterrichtseinsatz, wenn der/die LehrerIn dem historischen Hintergrund von Jewishness in The Assistant mehr Zeit einräumen möchte. Diese Gruppenarbeit geht sicherlich über das unmittelbar erforderliche Maß an Hintergrundinformation zu The Assistant hinaus, bietet aber die Möglichkeit, einen tieferen Einblick in die Geschichte der Juden in den USA und die Gründe für die Emigration der ersten Generation amerikanischer Juden. Die Gruppenarbeit ermöglicht es den SchülerInnen, intensiv landeskundlich zu arbeiten. Der Umgang mit diesem Thema kann auch deshalb interessant sein, da sie sich einmal mit einer anderen minority group in den USA beschäftigt als dem oft benutzten Beispiel der African Americans.
Wenn die/der LehrerIn kurze, aber dennoch präzise Informationen zu den Immigrationswellen für besser erachtet oder sich aus zeitlichen Gründen dazu gezwungen sieht, wäre der Vorschlag A vorzuziehen.
Die Ergebnisse der Gruppenarbeiten sollen anschließend im Plenum zusammengetragen werden.
Bei niedrigerem Leistungsniveau des Kurses sollten die Textauszüge von der/dem LehrerIn annotiert werden.
(Das "erwartete Schülerverhalten" wird für diese Gruppenarbeit nicht aufgeführt, da es den Rahmen dieser Arbeit sprengen würde. Diese Aufgabe wurde exemplarisch für den Vorschlag A durchgeführt.)
1.2.) Einleitende Bemerkungen des/der Lehrers/in zu Jews as a minority
(basierend auf Textauszüge aus: C. Bezalel Sherman, The Jews within American Society (5).)
Jews as a minority
If there is a white ethnic group in the USA that possesses all characteristic features of a minority, it is the Jews. Most other minority groups differ only in one respect from the majority, for example, the Irish are a religious minority, but linguistically belong to the majority, the Germans are a linguistic minority but belong to the religous majority. However, the Jews have always been a minority in all significant social relations. The Jews differed from the majority in religion and culture, in historical experience and social formation. Other minority groups formed the majority in the countries they had come from, but the Jews were also a minority in all the countries of their emigration. In all of these countries the Jews had been persecuted or at least been discriminated against. For this reason, the Jews, more than any other group, were ideologically motivated. With very few exceptions, individual Jews had a sense of responsibility for the entire Jewish community.
In America, the Jews suffered from the same discriminations as the other immigrant groups. The Jews offered some resistance to the dominant forces of the majority. Resistance led to the mistrust of the majority, but at the same time it strengthened the feelings of solidarity among the Jewish minority. It was the old conflict between assimilating and isolating forces. Every ethnic group had to deal with this conflict, and in this sense the Jews have been no exception.
However, the needs that led to the emigration of the Jews were more pressing than the needs of other minority groups. It was not only poverty from which the Jews suffered in the old countries more than other ethnic groups, they also suffered from discriminations, restrictions and boycotts. The religious persecution from which the Jews had to flee was much more severe. There were other minority groups that came to the States to seek religous freedom, but the Jews came to find physical security as well. Thus the difference between the Jewish and the non-Jewish immigrants can be defined in the following general way: while the others mainly wanted to improve their situation, the Jews frequently looked simply for refuge.
However, the Jewish immigrant does not exist. Jewish immigration took place at different times and the countries the Jews emigrated from were, as I have already mentioned, not only different geographically, but also politically, economically, socially and culturally. Therefore it is our task now to have a closer look at the four Jewish immigration waves into the USA that have been distinguished. When we discuss the four immigration waves we must bear in mind that each of the major waves was actually made up of a number of smaller waves and also that the immigrants in each wave were not necessarily socially homogeneous. Since each of the waves had practically no relation with the other waves, we want to find out in which way the four Jewish immigration waves differed from each other.
I would like you to split up into three groups and then deal with one of the immigration waves. I have written down a few questions on the board. If you like, you may use your dictionaries to look up some difficult words.
1.3.) Fragen für alle 3 Gruppen:
a) Of what nationality were the immigrants?
b) How can the situation that prevailed in the countries of emigration be described?
c) What were the economic conditions in the USA during the period of the
immigration wave like?
d) What were the forms of economic integration the immigrants assumed?
e) What was their cultural background?
Textauszüge aus: C. Berzalel Sherman, The Jew within American Society, S. 59-74 (6).
1st immigration wave: The Sephardim, 1654-1840.
The Sephardim - the Spanish-Portuguese-Jews- came from countries which possessed colonies on several continents. They brought with them an experience of mercantilistic operations on a world-wide scale. They settled in several of the larger port cities and engaged largely in import and export, transoceanic and intercolonial trade, and other forms of commerce. These functions were readily adapted to the central economic task of the colonies, the main objective of which was the development of their domestic economy and the finding of a place of their own on the world market. The Sephardic Jews, after achieving adjustment, belonged almost without exception to the possessing classes (...)
The Sephardim were heirs to the traditions of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. The Jews of that age distinguished themselves for their loyalty to their religion, on the one hand, and for their broad worldliness in political, social and cultural affairs, on the other. They produced important works of Jewish religion and philosophy and expressed the traditional Jewish longing for the ancient homeland of Palestine in wondrous poetry. (...)
At the same time, they created works of general human interest and value. They were at home in everything that affected their country and the world. Not until the rise of the American Jewish settlement did a Jewish community in the Diaspora succeed so well in establishing as harmonious a balance between their own religious culture and the general secular culture. (...)
The harmony was shattered when the provinces of Arab Spain fell under the political and spiritual domination of Catholic Spain. The fires of the Inquisition destroyed, in the first instance, Jewish learning. Neither in Spain nor in Portugal could the Jews continue to devote themselves to Jewish studies and to observe freely the injunctions of the Jewish religion. From the Jewish point of view, they degenerated; but those who remained Jews brought with them, after the Expulsion from Spain in 1492, that same excruciating loyalty to Judaism which earlier had enabled so many of their co-religionists to accept the martyrdom of the auto-da-fès*. The Sephardim carried the selfsame loyalty with them to the New World (...)
The Sephardim salvaged from their heritage the inner harmony between Jewish religiosity and worldly interests. They possessed a rather high level of secular culture, and what they lacked in Jewish learning they tried to make up for by their piety and devotion to the redicovered faith of their ancestors. They raised no doubts as to the foundations of Jewish being: they accepted their Jewishness and all its varied social manifestations, which centered on the synagogue, as an unquestioned and self-evident matter. The Sephardic were strictly Orthodox...
*autodafè: hier: Ketzergericht- und Verbrennung (aus dem Fremwörterduden)
2nd immigration wave, The German Jews (Ashkenazic), 19th century.
The first German Jews came to America from small towns, and they were very poor. Arriving during the Period when the westward expansion of the frontier was in full swing, great numbers of them shouldered packs and followed the routes of the covered wagons. (...) Because of the enormous and hectic mobility within the country at the time when the German Jewish immigration reached its peak, this wave displayed a much greater tendency than either the first or the third waves to spread out geographically; thus, dozens of Jewish communities throughout the United States owe their establishment to the German Jews.
When they first came here, these Jews belonged to the lowest levels of the petty bourgeoisie. Aside from peddlers, there were also a great variety of small tracers, white-collar and wage workers.(...) Among the German Jews, there was a great difference between the strictly orthodox poor immigrants who came from the backward German provinces, and the more cultured and worldly immigrants of 1848 and after. (...) The German Jews lived in an atmosphere of chronic skepticism during the nineteenth century. This was the shining period of rationalism, to which religion, on the defensive, sought means of adaptation. Capitalism opened the way to the Emancipation of the Jews of western Europe, and the Jews of Germany embarked on that road full of hope and ambition.
In Germany, Emancipation came after centuries of ghetto life. The problem had been to enter positions that had previously been closed to them. (...) Many German Jews sacrificed their religion in order to attain a higher social status. Although only the first rays of Emancipation appeared in Germany itself during the period of mass German-Jewish immigration to this country, they were sufficient to cause fundamental modifications in the spiritual life of the German Jews. The latter were no longer able to take their Judaism for granted, they were beginning to raise basic doubts about its essence (...) The German Jews sought not a theological answer but a social one. That Jews lived in two cultures wherever they were able to establish material or spiritual contacts with their Gentile neighbors was a familiar enough fact even before the Emancipation. Emancipation, however, made them aware of the sharp conflict between the cultures. (...)
The United States in mid-nineteenth century provided an especially favorable background. (...) Economic opportunities were so unlimited that Jews did not find it necessary to sacrifice their Jewishness in the interests of economic integration. If the Jews have felt any pressure, it was not pressure, as in Germany, from the state, but rather a social pressure: from the tyranny of the majority.(...) (They asked themselves): What actually was the basis for Jewish group existence? The answer of the German Jews was: the Jews were not a people but a religious association. (...) Judaism too could not remain forever rigid, and attempts at its reformation began to appear. This immigration brought large numbers of Jews who were psychologically and culturally prepared for Reform (...) Viewed historically, Reform Judaism in the United States constituted the first organized attempt to adapt Jewish ethnicity to the American frame.
3rd immigration waves: Eastern European Jews, (1880-1930)
The Jews of eastern Europe came from countries where capitalism was just beginning to take its first steps, and in this country they encountered a capitalism that was soon to be more advanced than any in the the world. By that time, the geographical boundaries of the United States were permanently fixed, and free land was exhausted. The East European Jews concentrated in the larger industrial centers and became a huge proletariat. (...)
The Jews from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Rumania, etc., came from countries where the ghetto survived as both a physical and a cultural institution. If the first two waves of immigration were carried over from areas where conditions had a certain similarity to the situation in the United States at the time of the immigration, the third wave came from countries that bore not the slightest resemblance, materially or spiritually, economically or politically, to America. (...), the Jews from Russia and Rumania altogether lacked a transition period.
The cultural life of the Jews in mid-nineteenth-century Russia was not far different from Jewish cultural life in western Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The rabbinic tradition was still the dominant culture in the Jewish Pale at that time when mass Jewish emigration to America began. But capitalist and democratic winds from the West, which had already been felt by the Tsarist regime, also blew secularist breezes into the ghetto, especially in the later years of the nineteenth century. (...) Because of poltical and long cultural isolation, the East European Jews at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries lacked the basis for gradually reforming their mode of life in a purely evolutionary way. Any step of the beaten track came into sharp conflict with both the internal and external environment and became a revolutionary act. This was particularly true in matters concerning religious and cultural tradition.
East European Jews were overwhelmingly Orthodox in religion. Those who departed from Orthodoxy moved, as a rule, in the direction not of religious reforms but of a complete break with religion. The division within the Jewish community was consequently not between conservators and reformers, but between traditionalists and radicals. And this division was equally marked from the very beginning of the East European immigration in the United States. On the one hand, this mass immigration enormously strengenthened Orthodoxy and made it the dominant religious trend of the majority of the Jewish population in this country. On the other hand, the same immigration included large numbers of Jews, who, despite their irreligiosity - and, in many cases, even atheism - nevertheless considered themselves an integral part of the Jewish community. To the old question - What are the Jews? - The East European immigration came to give a new answer: a people. The seeds of a secular Jewish nationalism were sown, with the Yiddish language playing an extraordinary part in the process.