Category Archives: Reading Responses

Henry Goldschmidt discusses the segregation, tension, and conflict between African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and Lubavitch Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights. He goes into the ongoing tension between the two groups that sometimes result in violence and later revenge. It’s important … Continue reading →

In both Henry Goldschmidt’s Race and Religion Among the Chosen People of Crown Heights, and in Robert Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street, there is a key idea that both of these books run by. It is the idea that … Continue reading →

Throughout the semester out class has been dividing neighborhoods and ethnicities and seeing the mixture between the two, and how the various ethnic groups came to transform their neighborhood into their own, and give it a certain ethnic flavor.  Through … Continue reading →

Both Slyomovic’s article and Race and Religion Among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights illustrate how public places play a large role in aiding people in expressing themselves, their religion, and their cultures.  Starting with Slyomovic’s article, participants in the … Continue reading →

Being that the year is 2012, I think I was living in a naive little bubble, figuring that racism and religious persecution was behind us. Sadly, we are no where near achieving that, as the Gavin Cato case in the … Continue reading →

It seems unnecessary to mention that both Harry Goldschmidt and Robert Orsi’s pieces focus on religion among other aspects that ultimately define the identity of a group of people. That much can be gathered from the titles of the respective … Continue reading →

Reading “The Madonna of 115th Street”, I was honestly surprised to see how deeply the devotion ritual mirrored not only the day-to-day experiences of the immigrant population of Italian Harlem, but their emotions as well. Their march through the streets … Continue reading →

Until now, we have been examining communities based on ethnicity. Now, we begin to examine communities based on religion. Two great examples are the Lubavitch-Jewish community in Crown Heights and the Muslim communities throughout New York City. It is evident … Continue reading →

The Madonna of 115th Street begins with a  description of a festival started Italian immigrants in Harlem (an an introduction). It then goes on to explain the history of the immigration of Southern Italians to the northern part of Manhattan and … Continue reading →

Upon reading the two selections for this week, I was further reminded of some of the complications behind why stereotypes and racism exist.  Firstly, when immigrants come to America, they bring over customs and cultures from their homeland- which is … Continue reading →