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Sarah Masters reviews the film

In Her Own Time: The Final Fieldwork of Barbara Myerhoff

In Her Own Time: The Final Fieldwork of Barbara Myerhoff is a film that reveals how a confluence of events drew one very secular academic into a closer relationship with her Jewishness.

Professor Barbara Myerhoff was an anthropologist with an academic career in the study of community. She was well known in academic circles, and, in the early 80s, she decided to study and film the Orthodox Jewish community of the Los Angeles district of Fairfax.

Two years after undertaking the project, Barbara Myerhoff received a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. In her role as an anthropologist, she continued to question individuals considering conversion to Orthodox practices and, for a while, she maintained her distance as an objective academic from the religious practices of the Orthodox Jews she studied.

But Myerhoff also decided to explore her own relationship with Orthodox Judaism, and so she asked documentary film director Lynne Littman to capture the importance of religious traditions and practices in the Orthodox community in far more personal terms. Meyerhoff purified herself in the mikvah, and among other things, asked the Rebbe to bless her in writing. She even “changed her name to ‘trick’ the angel of death.” She actively pursued answers to the tough questions she posed long after becoming wheelchair-bound, up to the time of her death at age 49.

In Her Own Time: The Final Fieldwork of Barbara Myerhoff gives to viewers a social exploration of an Orthodox Jewish enclave from an anthropological perspective. The film also highlights Meyerhoff’s personal journey, and shines a light on the enduring values of commitment to a life steeped in ritual and spiritual community.

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Completed: 1985
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Director: Lynne Littman
Producers: John Bernstein, Vikram Jayanti and Lynne Littman

If you are interested in purchasing this film, you can do so at www.directcinema.com. The price of $150.00 for a copy of the film, which is still in educational distribution and not in home video distribution, includes public performance rights.

Book Review

Rev. Ken R. Hayden reviews

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

This novel is written by a well known and award winning Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, Sherman Alexie. Alexie engages the issues of suffering, oppression, spiritual values of two cultures and hope. It’s the story of Arnold Spirit, known on the reservation (rez) as “Junior”. Arnold is born with hydrocephalus and teased as “hydro” by some of his friends. As a 14 year old, with his black rimmed, thick coke bottle glasses, Arnold dreams of becoming a cartoonist. The novel is interspersed with cartoons by Junior. Life is hard on the rez. He says, “The kid was born with 10 too many teeth, so he gets them pulled — all in a single day, because the Indian Health Service pays for major dental work only once a year.”

While thumbing through the face page of his geometry book, he sees his mother’s name. Arnold is incensed that since the time his mother went to the rez school, no geometry books have been purchased. He hurls the book at his white teacher, Mr. P, and is kicked out of school. Junior and Mr. P. have a heart-to-heart talk which is painful, powerful and propels Arnold to act on his dream. He decides to transfer from his reservation school to an all white high school. He leaves the rez but does not forget his family or his best friend, Rowdy.

Arnold soon earns the respect of his new schoolmates with his humor, courage and strength. Arnold reflects on the impact of alcohol on his father, his sister and many cousins and friends. Considered a traitor by those he left behind, Arnold questions his dream, his family relationships and friendships. He appears to be falling apart.

Arnold struggles with his identity as a Spokane Indian. Seeing his accomplishments in the new school, he pointedly wonders if he will be accepted for who he is, in either cultural context. The death of Arnold’s treasured grandmother and later, the sudden death of his father’s best friend, Eugene, places himself between reason and powerful emotions. “After my grandmother died, I felt like crawling into the coffin with her. After my dad’s best friend, got shot in the face, I wondered if I was destined to get shot in the face, too.” Arnold says, “I’m fourteen years old and I’ve been to forty-two funerals. That’s the difference between Indians and white people.” The book engages issues of culture, identity, loss, death, and hope. A great book for those who are engaged by story.

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 2007, pp 240.

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