Preparing for Class: December 6

Number Our Days

Reminder: The movie will be shown in class on Tuesday; the discussion will begin after the movie on Tuesday and continue on into Thursday, so bring your download of this page to class on both days.

Homework: This semester, we’ve spent a great deal of time on the idea of culture as a defining force in all of our lives. The people in this video originally came from Jewish subcultures within Eastern Europe. As children or young adults, they came to the United States, where they learned a new language and became assimilated into this culture. By the mid-1970s, they are retired and live in Venice, California, where they are all members of the Israel Levin Center. (All this is explained by anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff during the film; you don’t need to restate it for your paper.)

For your final homework, describe in some detail what you see as the three most important elements unifying this subculture of elderly Jewish immigrants, using as many of the people and events in the film as you can to illustrate your description. Whatever you choose to analyze within this subculture, you must construct a logical, specific and factually-based argument to support it. (Length: 1-2 single-spaced, typewritten pages,which are due no later than noon on Monday, December 12, in the Liberal Arts Office.)

1. There are many human histories in the movie, and you should be able to focus in on each of them. Your notes should at least distinguish the following characters: Bertha, Mike, Doris, Pauline, Rose, Morey Rosen, Sam Stoller, and Harry Asimow.
2. What unifies the members of the Israel Levin Center? What common points do they have in their life stories? Where do they differ?
3. What does Harry Asimow's death have in common with Beowulf's? How could these people be seen as heroic?
4. What point does Morey Rosen make about the old people he works with? Is it still true today?
5. Why is work so important in the lives of the Israel Levin people? Why are they uncomfortable about the groceries that are distributed at the end of the Sabbath service?
6. Why is Sam Stoller unhappy with his life? Even Bertha seems happier. Why?
7. How do each of the people in the movie see their own lives as stories? What's Pauline's story, for instance? How does she tell it?
8. "Don't dwell on the past," Mike tells Bertha. Is this good advice?
9. As the anthropologist of your own life, you might decide whether you expect to find yourself connected to a support group such as the Israel Levin center when you're older. If so, what kind of group might it be? If not, why not?
10. This might be a good time to look back at your own journey through life so far, perhaps comparing it to one or more of the course texts, and perhaps projecting what you expect your journey will be like in comparison/contrast to the people in Number Our Days.
11. Aging is referred to by Barbara Myerhoff as a series of losses. Relate the losses depicted in Beowulf and Le Morte D'Arthur to those of the people in the movie.
12. We should also take a final look at the idea of storytelling. For the people of Number Our Days, as for many of the cultures we've studied, telling stories is the way people communicate who they are, where they came from and what they believe. We'll explore some of the ways in which people create their own identities by telling their stories, how they give meaning to experience through creating their own narratives. Be ready to be specific about the texts we've read together this semester.

"Dignity--they have. Irony--they have. A life not only lived every day, but every hour, every minute because these people are in their eighties and nineties and death is there. It's the invisible protagonist of every little scene you see played out. And death can be a great consciousness raiser."

"Most anthropologists work with remote, exotic people, so studying my own people was a new idea for me. At first I wasn't sure whether it was anthropology--or a personal quest."

"Aging is usually regarded as a series of losses . . . . Each day is made up of many small tasks and routines. Bertha's work, for example, is feeding pigeons, walking two miles every day, and telling and retelling a cycle of personal stories with messages about courage, dignity and autonomy."

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