Reading Response #1

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Our first reading assignments for this class are all centred on a research project that took place in 1993. There were two ‘sides’ to the project; one ‘team’ was to analyse and represent East Jerusalem, and the other West Jerusalem, and the final project would be hosted by the Smithsonian at the Washington Mall in an attempt to show an audience the diversity Jerusalem presents. I really liked reading the articles about the project, and I really wish that something like this would be something I could go to.

Reading El-Amiry’s article and seeing the difficulties the researchers faced when trying to balance the different ethnic groups was very interesting. I haven’t been to Jerusalem in a very long time, and I was mostly limited to East Jerusalem, but I remember visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and I couldn’t imagine trying to accurately represent two religions, let alone three, as well as all the diverse ethnic groups and cultures within Jerusalem alone. There are similarities, but the differences as well as the sensitivity of the topic would be so difficult, you have to respect everyone who worked on this project, especially everyone who tried to find the funding necessary.

The article written by Galit Hasan was another perspective about the research project, and the first thing I remember sticking out to me about the project was finding out that it was part of three projects as a whole, and that the other two were about Cajun culture and North American social dancing. I thought it was a little strange at the time, especially since the idea of the Jerusalem research project is not only different, but also is so diverse that there’s so much information to cover. It is interesting that neither the El-Amiry article nor the interview mentioned that the Oslo agreement affected the project; though it was mentioned in both Hasan's and Dr. Horowitz's articles. Looking back on it, I feel like that should have been an obvious mention but if I hadn’t read Hasan’s article then I would never have linked the two together despite the fact that I knew the project took place in 1993.

Additionally, while reading Hasan’s perspective on El-Amiry, it was interesting to see that fieldworkers from both sides of the project didn’t meet. While I understand that they were each working on different angles of Jerusalem – one regarding Arab Jerusalem and one regarding Jewish Jerusalem – I don’t understand how they couldn’t have met, if at least a few times, once they were done collecting research as they were completing their parts. Wouldn’t the final step of the project be to at least understand the research from the other side? I really liked reading Hasan’s report because it also gave me the Israeli side of the project, and especially the information that she was giving about the ethnic holidays and different ethnic groups within the Jewish side of Jerusalem.  Hasan’s analysis was different than Amiry’s in that it also gave us more information about the Jewish culture, and not just the difficulties the project faced.

I think my favourite part of all the articles though was in Dr. Horowitz’s article, where she talked about how they went about ordering ice cream to suit the Palestinian or Israeli colours, or had designs laid out with those colours to look vaguely like the flags, and the jokes the Palestinian and Israeli researchers were making about the white tents at the Smithsonian. It was hilarious, and it shows that there is the potential to make cooperation work between the two parties, despite cultural and political differences.