Shouf Tarik’s meaningless life lasted until this past July the 11th. Each day followed a pattern: he woke depressed, drove his cab depressed, and returned home with an empty soul. Thoughts of the city buildings, huge, that had once amazed and intrigued him with their towering potential, pressed in close and haunted his dreams. The exhaust and noise that choked and deafened him by day gave him headaches and a gooey cough each night. And the well-dressed people he ferried through the tides of rush hour, once in morning and once again in evening, were impatient, rude, and ostentatious. Their lashing sounds reverberated in his ears as he lay in bed at night.

 

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days lacks the high-profile commercial element so central to such movies as Schindler’s List. This German film dissociates itself from our Holocaust industry in its scope and its subject matter, not to mention its philosophy and its audience. Moreover, it serves to underline the fact that a multiplicity of meanings can be given to the Holocaust. The film’s foreignness and dissociation lead to new and unexpected associations, with the picture panning away from the standard fare and taking in a greater breadth of people, meanings and symbols.

 

Whiteness studies is a burgeoning field in the academy with much attention focused on the ways in which ethnic groups like the Irish, Italians, and Jews socially evolved from being racial outsiders to unproblematic whites over the course of the twentieth century. Often, however, the question of integration is framed in a simplistic way: first the white mainstream dislikes group X, then it decides that group X is actually ‘A-O.K.’ and admits it into the circle of whiteness. This unambiguously thrills group X, allowing it to demonstrate the type of exclusivity it formerly opposed. Eric L. Goldstein, assistant professor of history and Jewish studies at Emory University, has written a new book that treats the story of the Jews and whiteness in a more sophisticated way. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity is a scholarly work, thoroughly documented with each general claim immediately followed by a slew of qualifications and distinctions. It is also compelling and readable, putting forward an urgent and relevant thesis on a perennial topic of Jewish life in America. Goldstein stakes his work on the notion that the dominant forces in American society have consistently defined themselves according to a “black”/”white” dichotomy, which has rendered Jews consistently uncertain of their place.