tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14949117613787885182024-03-22T17:35:23.473-04:00Crenshaw SeedsAshley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-2955648475167644492024-03-22T17:15:00.007-04:002024-03-22T17:34:27.213-04:00Parashat Vayikra<p>Is there not a Surrealist painting involving a nose in the sky? There really should be. Think of it, a blue sky, a giant pair of nostrils, some smoke rising toward them, perhaps even a Cheshire cat-like smile floating in the air, appreciating the pleasing odors. </p><p>This week, in Parashat Vayikra, G-d tells the Israelites how to make sacrifices by fire, many of which generate "a pleasing odor to [G-d]." I remember in the days before my conversion to Judaism telling my mother about the notion of G-d appreciating smells. I had also recently been telling her that G-d doesn't have a body. If G-d has no body, G-d has no nose, she responded. I can't argue with that. </p><p>But somehow I find it more possible to believe in a spirit appreciating smells than, say, chowing down on a charred piece of sacrificed animal like--l'havdil!--Santa eating cookies. It's possible to imagine a spiritual being, like G-d, as existing in the air, ethereal. And an odor is just that. Odors and spirits seem compatible. Additionally, smoke from a sacrifice rises, and I tend to think of G-d as being "up there": in the sky, in the Heavens. Even the notion of G-d as being everywhere still puts G-d mostly in the atmosphere, in space.</p><p>Why might G-d enjoy pleasing odors? Rashi <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Leviticus.1.9.3?lang=bi" target="_blank">comments</a> that G-d finds the odors of sacrifices to be "satisfying" not for the smell itself necessarily but as evidence that the people are following the commandments. Perhaps the smell of a sacrifice is like that little strip of color blocks on a potato chip bag that a scanner can check to see that all the colors are printing properly and that hopefully the image, which the scanner can't see, looks okay. A pleasing odor signals that the commandments surrounding sacrifices are being followed--and hopefully the others, too.</p><p>Rashi later wonders at the reason for leaving the feathers on a bird being sacrificed: "But surely you will not find even a common sort of man who can smell the odour of burnt feathers without being disgusted with it! Why, then, does Scripture say that it shall be offered with the feathers?" Rashi asks. Does G-d truly think that burnt feathers smell good? The answer Rashi gives is that the offering "makes a finer show" with the feathers on. The parsha later notes that if a person can't afford a sheep for a sin offering, they may offer birds instead. Birds, therefore, are the offering of the poor, Rashi notes, and that's why there's an incentive to make them look as grand as possible--even if the odor of burning feathers is not pleasing to our own noses.</p><p>The Hebrew word translated as "pleasing" in the phrase pleasing odor, נִיחֹ֖חַ, is defined as "soothing, quieting, transquillizing." I find that last definition compelling. Imagine, the idea of producing a sort of tranquillizer or anesthesia that G-d would breathe in. In a moment of fear, the Israelites might want to render G-d a little less powerful, to sedate G-d a little bit. In other moments, when G-d seems less frightening, the idea of soothing or pleasing G-d might be more fitting.</p><p>What seems to connect most to my life in this parsha at this time is the notion of wanting people to do something (in this case, to burn an offering) less for the outcome of the action itself (the pleasing odor) than as a sign of fidelity. The idea that G-d would be satisfied, as Rashi said, by the odor as a signal that the Israelites were following the commandments reminds me of what my therapist says about requests I make of her. Sometimes, she supposes, I may want her to do certain things, like answer an email or give me a call, not so much because the I need the answer but because her giving me what I asked for would be a sign that she cared. Still cared. And still cared this week too. Why do I need such signals, rather than just having faith or remembering our history?</p><p>Maybe G-d, like me, needs a lot of reminders that people still care. Or G-d used to need those reminders. We no longer make sacrifices. Instead, we pray. I can't think of any particular pleasing odors that arise at our services. But we do light candles, which turn into CO2 and smoke (and water and energy). I hope G-d is pleased.</p><p>Shabbat Shalom, and have a good Purim!</p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-48287661815170930882024-03-12T22:13:00.164-04:002024-03-12T23:40:04.391-04:00Calf v. Mishkan<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmorgan8186/50007523552/in/photostream/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMAxQ51HDP-qOzpD4qdOeG4clcP3i4LFfCrj9RoM-hxSywIAGuMyaL00hENn_WT_9JTowqb8faYJmnP4OjTgbQLuX3yqi22cy6RO5AbdlUmu4hQHaFv18OWWxOrIlJrQ5fL765VSBGuplBWk3abGEC9ojs4OzQNZEh2udHyR4-eQGvKkJp0nuDSRjaR9eG/w320-h320/50007523552_8be39a1e13_w.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mmorgan8186/50007523552/in/photostream/" target="_blank">Mark Morgan</a> via Flickr, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC License 2.0</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: medium;">It was Shabbat, and I had just washed my dishes. Then I started writing this. Soon I’d head out for a date, which I hoped would be fun. “At least I’ll have the dishes washed,” I thought. The date, I couldn’t control; the dishes, I could. So I chose the dishes and the relative solidity of words that I could create and destroy.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I’d say that in washing the dishes, I chose the golden calf. Let me explain. Lately the rabbis at my synagogue have been talking about the distinction between the golden calf, which is solid, literally and figuratively, and the mishkan, the portable house of worship that holds empty space for an invisible god. Many things in life seem to sort themselves into these categories: golden calf or mishkan. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">For anyone who needs a refresher on the golden calf incident: After G-d delivered the 10 Commandments to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, Moses went up on the mountain to get further instructions from G-d (and the first set of stone tablets). He was up there 40 days and 40 nights. Meanwhile, the people down below got tired of waiting for Moses, wondering what had happened to him. In their impatience, they melted down jewelry they had brought from Egypt to fashion a golden calf, an idol, which they proceeded to worship. When Moses got back and saw the golden calf, he was so angry at the Israelites that he smashed the tablets that G-d had just given him and destroyed the calf. But in time, he got new tablets and taught the Israelites to build something different: not a golden calf but a mishkan.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I think Shabbat is the mishkan in temporal form. Not empty space but empty time. Keeping Shabbat requires faith in the importance of something that isn't happening, faith in the value of not working. Thinking not “at least I did the dishes” but “at least I didn’t”! </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In going on a date Shabbat afternoon, I chose the mishkan, figuratively speaking. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>The future is in the mishkan. Hope is in the mishkan. The unknown is in the mishkan.</span><span> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Pessimism, on the other hand, is the golden calf. The past is the golden calf. Sabotage is the golden calf. Destruction is the golden calf. These are all things we can be certain about. But it's certainty at the expense of hope.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I include the past in my list of golden calf-like things, but not without hesitation. The past isn't all bad any more than the future will be all good. But the past is solid. Remembering the past and feeling expected emotions, even the negative ones, can be easier than imagining and hoping for an unknown future.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Since I don’t necessarily have a problem with remembering the past, maybe golden calves aren't all bad, either. The issue is not the object, be it a golden calf or a photo album, but how people use it or what it displaces. For the Israelites, the golden calf displaced faith in an invisible god. In more metaphorical cases, golden calf-like behavior and thought can displace hope and a willingness to take a chance on something new. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Here's another golden calf-like thing I'm slow to condemn: I have a beloved stuffed animal. It's a purple bunny, but with a switch of color and species, it could be a golden calf. A stuffed animal is solid not against the teeth, like gold, but solid as in dependable. You can carry it around and squeeze it as hard you want without hurting it. You don't have to wonder if and when it will come back because it never goes anywhere (and woe to the parents of a child who has misplaced a favorite toy). </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>If I worshipped and put all my hope in my purple bunny, that could cause me some problems, could prevent me from living my (adult!) life. But I don’t do that. My bunny is a delight. </span><span>Further, I think there's some value in thinking about the golden calf in the framework of child development.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">My therapist calls stuffed animals “<a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/transitional-object" target="_blank">transitional objects</a>.” Such objects help the child transition from having a parent around all the time, and getting comfort from them, to being able to comfort herself. The American Psychological Association <a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/transitional-object" target="_blank">definition</a> of transitional object describes the destination point of this transition in a wonderful way: as the development of an internal representation of the parent that comforts the child. The goal isn't to resign yourself to solitude; it's to feel the comfort of someone who loves you even when they aren't physically there.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Maybe the golden calf was a transitional object for the Israelites. Moses was gone, and they weren't sure that he was coming back. They definitely weren't sure that this newly introduced god could be counted on in absentia. So they made a golden calf to soothe themselves. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Eventually, though, Moses did come back. And eventually, the Jewish people did learn to find comfort in the empty space of the mishkan. And, perhaps, within ourselves. If the golden calf helped us learn to do that, more power to it.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">*</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I recently listened to a podcast about Gazans who are eating animal food to survive. It reminded me of a comment my parents occasionally made that they "aren't eating cat food yet,” meaning that they have enough money to support themselves—and to help me, too. As a journalist looking for stories, I thought: aha. A feature about people eating animal food. When and where has this happened in the past? What distinguishes human and animal food, anyway? Dogs can’t eat chocolate; are there other human foods animals can’t eat? Animal foods people can’t eat? The history of pet food? </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I might be able to get my hands on some of this information. But what I really want is not the history of starvation but for the Gazans, for all people, to have human food. As for how to ensure that, what to write about that? The fighting has to end. But how? What happens next? What’s fair to everyone? There I draw a blank. And my point here is that sometimes, a blank is appropriate. There's hope in that blank space.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I’m not writing a pet food story, whose dismal outlines I can make out. I’m holding out for something unknown and better.</span></div>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-66952939540219576652024-03-10T12:51:00.009-04:002024-03-10T13:11:47.530-04:00Parashat Vayakhel: The Almond Blossom Menorah<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In last week's Torah portion, Vayakhel, Moses instructs the Israelites to keep the Sabbath and then gives them detailed instructions for building the mishkan, the portable house of worship that will allow G-d to live among the people as they wander the desert. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">These instructions sound very familiar, as they’ve already appeared in an earlier Torah portion, Terumah. In that portion, G-d is telling Moses, who is with G-d on Mount Sinai, what to tell the Israelites about how to build the mishkan. Meanwhile, at the base of the mountain, the people get tired of waiting for Moses and make a golden calf to worship. In this week’s portion, after getting angry at the Israelites, smashing the tablets, and going back up the mountain for new tablets, Moses finally gets to convey G-d’s message to the Israelites, and they build the mishkan just as G-d had specified.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The mishkan instructions do not call up an image of a magnificent structure any more than the steps of an Ikea instruction manual, to borrow a reference that Rabbi Matt Green made in a <a href="https://cbebk.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Rabbi-Matt-Green-Terumah-5784.pdf" target="_blank">drash about parashat Terumah</a>, would suffice to show you what your chest of drawers should look like. With a chest of drawers, though, you already know what it’s supposed to look like. Not so for the mishkan—at least, not so for me.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wonder what the purpose of including so many details, and including them twice, was for the writers of the Torah. Were they trying to preserve instructions for building the mishkan in case the Jews ever needed to build it again? Did it not occur to the authors to say “Moses told the Israelites what G-d had told him,” rather than repeating it all? I don’t know and would like to learn know how others have answered this question.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The part that I like best about this parsha is the description of the lampstand—menorah, in Hebrew. Finally, something I can recognize because of the familiar word and also because of the description of a structure with three branches on each side. If the mishkan description gave us the menorah (and this is the first mention of menorah in the Torah, according to <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-menorah-let-your-light-shine/" target="_blank">My Jewish Learning</a>), maybe it was worth slogging through the less reader-friendly sections. Then again, perhaps other parts of the mishkan resonate with other people or will resonate with me another year.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The text says that the cups of the menorah were shaped like almond flowers, per G’d’s instructions. That’s quite the detail. Interesting that the menorah would have branches and flowers, like a tree. (Makes me think of the burning bush, but that's another subject for another day.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I Googled “almond flowers” and happened upon something else familiar. What came up first, before photographs or direct references to nature or botany, was an image that is stitched onto a pillow that I see with a turn of my head as I sit here writing of branches and white blossoms against a blue background. It’s Van Gogh’s <i>Almond Blossom</i>, and it can be found patterning all sorts of objects in addition to pillows. The painting itself lives in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlzSnPHi78wcQkGZOJQfcAmczk7PRSChLXwI5Q5Xkri28j_MIaxJi3ELcPnxI0iWvaCZ-N9FFtnUVkvCWAMUHYndaacuXjA-E337u8ZtB4ZCoH2SgD7CFDr57JECHcjZOHxN9ibnfxOR5WyoVLaXVj49Y6gWRxVDJTnYKHmgfbpLXVoE7k4goo95cdzKr/s4032/AlmondBlossomPillow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlzSnPHi78wcQkGZOJQfcAmczk7PRSChLXwI5Q5Xkri28j_MIaxJi3ELcPnxI0iWvaCZ-N9FFtnUVkvCWAMUHYndaacuXjA-E337u8ZtB4ZCoH2SgD7CFDr57JECHcjZOHxN9ibnfxOR5WyoVLaXVj49Y6gWRxVDJTnYKHmgfbpLXVoE7k4goo95cdzKr/s320/AlmondBlossomPillow.png" width="240" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I doubt that Van Gogh had Judaism in mind when painting that work, but my <i>Almond Blossom</i> pillow does relate to my life as a Jew. After I had converted to Judaism, friends of our family sent me the pillow as a gift to celebrate my conversion and to thank me for some baked goods I’d sent them as care packages. They’d heard about the tradition of reclining on pillows during the Passover seder and so sent me a very fine pillow to recline on during my first Passover as a Jew. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I had been sending baked goods because the husband in the couple was dying. He died on what was the eighth day of Passover that year. (These friends aren’t Jewish, by the way.) Now the pillow, which sits in a yellow chair in my apartment looking beautiful and occasionally cushioning someone’s back, is a memory of him and of his surviving wife. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This past Shabbat at CBE, Rabbi Green spoke about our wish to see ourselves mirrored in the world, referencing the women’s mirrors that were built into the mishkan. I wanted to find myself mirrored in the Torah portion and so was thrilled to discover in it not just a menorah but one patterned with blossoms that, it turned out, were sitting right next to me on the Van Gogh pillow. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yet the pillow and its blossoms weren’t entirely known to me. I didn’t remember that it depicted almond blossoms. I knew it was Van Gogh, but I just thought of it as showing a flowering tree. I didn’t remember that it was an almond tree or know that almond trees are the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/erupting-with-flowers-before-spring-almond-tree-a-bounty-of-jewish-symbolism/" target="_blank">first ones to bloom in Israel in the spring</a>. In addition to finding something familiar, I learned something about the pillow, about the world, from studying the parsha. It was more than a mirror. Perhaps next year, I’ll find a connection to, say, dolphin skins.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In a way, just by being Jewish, or maybe even just by being interested (I say to include my former non-Jewish self), we are connected to every parsha. The pillow was there sitting on the chair, and I had a connection to it whether or not I knew that the blossoms on it were from an almond tree. Learning more about the Van Gogh painting just deepened the connection or traced a path for it. The Torah is there “on the chair,” so to speak, for every Jew. Maybe every parsha reflects us, in some way, whether or not we know it. The connections are there for the finding. And chances are, as we seek out familiarity, something we knew, we’ll also find something new.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If this were Shabbat, I would say Shabbat Shalom. As it is, I wish everyone a <a href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/6311596/jewish/What-Is-Shavua-Tov.htm" target="_blank">shavua tov</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p><br /></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-28170599928557882522022-10-08T12:09:00.002-04:002022-10-08T12:13:07.288-04:00Oranges and Art: a Drash Delivered at CBE on August 12, 2022<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> <i>In 2022, the subject I found myself wanting to write about was an idea I encountered in parsha study (a discussion of the parsha, or the section of the Torah that is read in synagogues on a given week according to a universal schedule). Congregants at my synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim, occasionally give sermons (also called drashes or divrei Torah), and so with the support of the clergy, I wrote and delivered this. It was my big writing effort of 2022.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">You can watch it in the YouTube video below (starting at about the 31-minute mark) or read it here. Thanks for taking the time!</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9j37qTNkIBI" width="320" youtube-src-id="9j37qTNkIBI"></iframe></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">August 12, 2022, Congregation Beth Elohim, Park Slope (Brooklyn, NY)</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Shabbat Shalom. On this August evening, I want to bring us back to the evening of January 19. It wasn't hot! It was winter. We were shaken because the previous Shabbat, a man with a gun had taken a Reform congregation hostage in Colleyville, Texas. In the Torah, the Israelites were at Sinai receiving the 10 commandments. And in Rabbi Timoner's Wednesday night parsha study class, on Zoom, a group of us were studying said commandments and trying to figure out how many there were, really. Also, citrus fruit was in season.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I had taken to buying oranges by the bag. All five pounds or whatever just about fit in the fruit bowl I had on the table. I'd bought them to eat, of course, yet they were beautiful piled in that bowl: uniform, balanced, and abundant. It was almost as if the bowl of oranges were a sculpture, or a still life.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But my oranges were not works of art. They were decidedly real. Within a week or so, I ate them or they began to mold. Unlike oranges in a painting by Matisse, say, who painted many a fruit bowl, real fruit doesn't stay ripe forever.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There's another distinction between my bowl of oranges<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and some still life painting, a distinction that, in a general sense,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">came up in parsha study: While oranges are God's creation, likenesses thereof are prohibited in the 10 commandments.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth,” Moses says to the people assembled at Sinai in Exodus chapter 20 verse four, transmitting the commandments from God to the people. God-via-Moses later tells us not to <i>worship</i> idols. But God initially says not to make idols, or likenesses, at all. Moses reiterates this commandment in this week's parsha, Vaetchanan.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The commandment against likenesses was news to me that January evening. Bad news. I'm a writer, and my love for art in its various forms is essential to who I am. Here God seemed to be saying that art was immoral. So I asked Rabbi Timoner about it, and she said that, indeed, though abstract art might be okay, likenesses are prohibited in the Torah. These stained glass windows in our sanctuary? Technically against the rules.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Torah commentators have disagreed about just how sweeping the prohibition is. Ramban, a medieval Spanish commentator, says that even images reflected in water are verboten. Italian commentator Sforno, who lived after Ramban, says that making a likeness is prohibited, quote, "even if you do not mean to use it as an object of worship."</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But others say that likenesses are only a problem if you worship them. In the Talmud, Rosh Hashanah, 24b, verse six, the rabbis are discussing a previous teaching, called a baraita, against making likenesses of celestial bodies. "When that baraita is taught,” the rabbis write, “it is in reference to the prohibition against worshiping them. However, there is no prohibition against forming an image in their likeness."</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">While I'm personally glad to hear that, it's the strict rule against likenesses that grabs my interest. Why would likenesses–art–be a moral issue? Rabbi Timoner told our parsha study class that the supposed wrongdoing, in making a likeness, was breaking off part of the universal oneness. Art certainly does that. It sets things apart, outside of time. I think there's something instructive in using the phrase "still life" to describe a painting of oranges. While actual oranges live and die and decay, the painted oranges are stuck in one moment. Art can preserve oranges at their peak, but at what cost? You can't eat a painting. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Now let's substitute "people" for oranges in this analogy. Say I took a selfie right now. What would be the difference between me and my portrait? At first, there would be no difference. But this is also a photo of me (and my dad). It's the 80s, and I'm a toddler. And there will be a time when these photos may remain but we will no longer be alive. That, I think, is the crux of the difference between the real world and likenesses of it. The world changes with time, and living things move through life cycles. Likenesses don't. Photos seem to preserve life because a figure in a photo can't die. But a figure in a photograph doesn't live, either. It's we, with our graying hair and our fleeting smiles, who are alive. The way to preserve life is not to capture or still it but to sustain its forward motion. Maybe God banned images because God doesn't want us to still life. Maybe God wants us instead to engage with it.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I say this as a person who looks at my family photo albums every time I go home.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In addition to oranges my apartment has among its decorations framed photos, and prints, of women I find attractive. I like staring at them. But I think the God I'm envisioning here would rather I go out and meet real people. If I stared too long, unlike with a beautiful person in a painting, I'd have to make a move or turn away. And in real life, the other person could stare back at me, which is another way of saying that I'd be part of the scene. Maybe I do sometimes treat life as a potential work of art, with me, the observer, standing outside it. A more participatory approach might not be such a bad thing. Could it be a mitzvah, even?</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Before concluding anything, I have to admit my bias: I couldn’t bear to say that making art is wrong because I love art. If the commandment prohibited all art, I would break the commandment. I’m not sure Judaism could withstand the prohibition either. From the Torah itself to divrei Torah like this one, narrative is central to our religion, and turning life into stories to examine and reexamine is one way of creating likenesses.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I don’t think that a God who gave us the Torah would want us to take the negative commandment literally. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when what’s right is absolutely to engage with reality and that when art prevents that, it is a problem.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Let me give you an example from my own life. The day of the 2016 presidential election, I dressed up, voted, watched some election returns in a bookstore. And then I went home and watched a chic flick. As history turned a corner, I was in a fantasy world in which movie stars live happily ever after. I don’t think my watching a movie influenced the election. It was just disrespectful. An occasion deserved my attention, and I chose instead to escape.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Or take me, writing this very drash, which I started thinking about that January night in parsha study class. In the wake of the Colleyville hostage crisis, I chose to write not "What can the 10 Commandments teach us about how to stop gun violence and anti-Semitism?" but "Is art immoral?" I chose this question not because I thought it held the potential to solve the world's problems but because it interested me personally. I wanted this to be a contribution to the community, yes. But I also did it for myself. Working on it has, on several occasions, lifted me out of a bad mood. I guess I escaped into my own art. Is that wrong?</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I don't think it is. I think taking refuge in art would only be wrong–an abdication of responsibility and spurning of opportunity–if we left the real world behind altogether. Lucky for us, that's impossible. There is no art-only option. We cannot stand outside our lives and just watch. Nor is there a life-only option. Commandment or no commandment, art is not just going to disappear. Fundamentally, art is here to stay because one concept of art is that it's simply the world viewed through a particular lens, one drawn to beauty and prone to contemplation. That way of seeing things is ingrained in us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The bowl of oranges is and will always be beautiful. They’re also delicious. Let us thank God for all of it. Shabbat Shalom.</span></p><br /><p></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-74133227631124631812021-09-08T16:55:00.022-04:002021-09-08T18:24:24.184-04:00Going Across<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the year since I’ve started exploring Judaism, my pronouns have for the first time begun to feel complicated.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The question for me is not gender identity and whether to use ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘they,’ or another third-person pronoun.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Religious identity is the complication.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When I write about Jews, is the pronoun ‘we’ or ‘they’? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m not Jewish, so you’d think the answer would be simple, </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but it doesn’t feel that way at all. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the Passover haggadah, when children ask the four questions, the ‘wicked child’ asks 'what does this ritual mean to you?' </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What makes him wicked is that he uses the pronoun 'you' rather than 'we,' as if he isn’t also Jewish. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t want to other the Jews. I want to be one of them. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">One of us? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">It gets particularly complicated when I’m writing about what Jews do, or what some Jews do, from my recent experience of doing the thing, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">like reciting a list of communal sins and trying to atone for them on Yom Kippur. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It was in a blog post that related to sin and Yom Kippur traditions that I had to make a decision whether to write ‘we’ or ‘they’ to refer to Jews. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I chose ‘we’ </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">because I wanted to. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, it was in part because I didn’t want to other the Jews, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but it was mostly because I wanted to be part of the group. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If I had to choose—and I did, pronouns-wise—I chose the Jewish people. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another way to look at it is to say that I was referring not to Jews but to people who observe Yom Kippur. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Although not yet a Jew, I had recently become a ‘person who observes Jewish holidays.’</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I wanted to write 'we' to indicate that I was speaking from experience (although just one Yom Kippur’s worth, to be fair) and not writing about something other people do. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">To imply that observing the High Holy Days was something Jews did and I didn't would be inaccurate </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and would also raise the questions: Why am I talking about this, then, or how do I know this?</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Writing ‘we’ also has the potential to be wicked, though, because it could give the impression that I'm Jewish, when I'm not </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">yet. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I need an in-between pronoun, a pronoun for someone who isn’t Jewish but who does Jewish things. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">We/they </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">How about 'whey'? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a writing workshop, I marveled at a person who, during introductions, specified that this person’s pronoun was ‘we.’ </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now I understand </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">identifying as ‘we’ and wanting to express that. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I intended to do Jewish things without becoming Jewish, I suppose I could distinguish between doing and being: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who I am versus what I do; </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who I am and who Jews are </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">versus what some Jews and I—that is, we—do. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I do intend to become Jewish. I’m converting. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Who I am is changing. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">'We' is a first-person pronoun used to refer to oneself and others in the same group. It requires knowledge of oneself and of the group. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Am I in a group with these people? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Answer ‘yes’ and the pronoun is ‘we.’ </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Am I separate from these people? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Answer ‘yes’ and the pronouns are ‘you’ and </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">‘they.’ </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But what if you answer 'sort of'?</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I ever thought there was anything simple about the pronoun ‘we,’ I renounce it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question: ‘What are your pronouns?’ deals mostly with what others call you, the third person. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But this is about the first person; this is about what I call myself. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>Comment m'appelle-je?</i> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What is my name? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Others can't answer the question for me. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then again, they can and do. It's as simple as 'let's go!' </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It's as simple as 'and we say amen.' </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am turning Jewish, converting. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m somewhere in between, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">outside of the binary, Jew or non-Jew. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm not Jewish, but… </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm not Jewish, yet. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abraham was the first Hebrew, and Hebrew, or Ivri, in Hebrew, comes from a verb that means to cross over. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Transition comes from the Latin trans (across) and ire (to go). </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I am transitioning to a Hebrew identity </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(and by Hebrew I just mean Jewish). </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Is the act of transition inherently Jewish? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'd like to think so because it makes me feel as if my converting were somehow meant to be,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">that I've put the etymological key in its lock and opened a door, to Judaism, that was waiting for me.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm not entirely sure what Abraham crossed over.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and the Jordan.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I think that Abraham crossed over in a religious sense.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He rejected his father and his father’s religion, smashing the idols in his father’s shop, to follow God and God's instructions.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He also left his first home</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">in search of a new one.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you," (Gen. 12:1) God told Abraham.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know, or have some idea, where I’m going, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">who I’m becoming, </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">where/who: </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Israel.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I wear the star around my neck </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">alongside a pendant the shape of Mount Desert Island, Maine, where I grew up. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I was raised ‘not Christian’ by parents who rejected the religions of their childhoods.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">How Jewish of them, how like Abraham, except that they also rejected the notion of God. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mom taught me not use 'God' as an exclamation,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but this was out of respect not for the Lord and commandments but for other people. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We ate challah on Christmas Eve and, </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">at Easter, made Ukrainian eggs (though we weren’t Ukrainian either), </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">drawing designs with wax, dying the eggs, melting off the wax, </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and (of course my mom did all the hard stuff) very carefully blowing or sucking out the eggs' raw innards. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My mom made the challah and also “Czech Christmas Bread” </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">using recipes from the <i>New York Cookbook. </i></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What we didn’t do was go to church. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The time a babysitter taught me a bedtime prayer about dying, my dad was quite upset,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">or so goes the story my mom tells; I was too little to remember.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">After her husband died, the Bible’s Ruth had to make a choice between two religions and two groups of people because she had to decide where she was going to live: Moab, with her native people, or Bethlehem, with her mother-in-law Naomi and the Jews.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">She couldn’t be between the groups. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">As was the case for Abraham, the question of which religion to follow was tied up with that of parents and whether or not to leave them. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Turn back, each of you to her mother's house" (Ruth 1:8) Naomi said to Ruth and to Ruth's sister-in-law. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indeed the sister-in-law went back "to her people and her gods" (Ruth 1:15).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Ruth continued on to Bethlehem and in so doing chose the Jews.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of going back, she went across, geographically and spiritually.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her story became a Biblical example of conversion to Judaism.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Becoming Jewish won’t change (New York!) where I live,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but in Judaism I will have a new 'spiritual home,' as the phrase goes, or maybe just new places for my spirit to venture. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'll also get a new name, a Hebrew one.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In it, I’ll be identified as the daughter of Abraham and Sarah, as opposed to the daughter of my own parents. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">How will I call myself? Ashley, daughter of Ben and Sandi </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">or Ruth bat Abraham v'Sarah? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It will be both. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">With two names, I'll be a ‘we’ all on my own. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">But I’m not</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">on my own.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This year, during my first breadless Passover,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">at my parents' house,</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I assembled Seder plates and my mom made macaroons dipped in dark chocolate</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">—my dad is certainly pro-macaroon—</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">which we all ate.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>Note: This piece records how I felt as early as June, 2021, when I first submitted the piece for discussion in my writing group. As time has passed, I've felt more and more like part of the group at my synagogue and beyond. I wouldn't have sat down and written this piece today because I no longer feel like an outsider hoping to be let in. Wait another week and I'll have to change 'one Yom Kippur's worth' to 'two' because I will have observed the High Holy Days for another year. So this piece is a time capsule from mid-conversion. Many pieces of writing are time capsules by the time they are published. It's quite likely that the next time I publish anything else about religion, I will be Jewish. </i></span></span></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-48458148446840941662021-05-14T12:25:00.002-04:002021-05-14T14:28:23.544-04:00On Paths<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Orbital_motion.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Orbital_motion.gif" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Public domain, via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_motion.gif" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Every morning I get up and meditate. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(Or most mornings, as of last August.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A rabbi at my synagogue leads a daily meditation on Facebook live. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Recently, the meditation focused on discipline and limit-setting within humility.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Have the humility to know that you can’t do everything, the rabbi said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We often consider limit-setting from the perspective of the actor, the one building the fence or saying no.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Was this the humility to know that life also sets limits on you?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There, meditating, I returned to my lifelong dilemma: How to pursue multiple disciplines, with discipline.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Would a humble perspective say this is impossible? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Violin, dance, writing, languages, science, running, now Judaism—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Practices all, each with its rituals. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Perhaps having a practice has become a ritual. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Now I’m going to services, making challah, reading the Torah portion (usually). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There was a time when I got up, went to ballet class, went to work, went to bed, and did it all again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the dressing room, in my late twenties, I asserted to the ladies changing from leotards into regular clothes that I would one day be one of the old people in ballet class, one of the retirees who dances every day. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I imagined myself on a decades-long path. Instead, it lasted about a year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">At a meeting for young members of the synagogue, when asked what I hoped to get out of being a member </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I found myself saying that I hoped in thirty years, when I was an old woman, I would have a community of people I knew and who knew me </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">because I’d been there ‘forever.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I do hope that, but you have to understand, I joined the synagogue two months ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The idea that they could continue forever is something I like about rituals. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My mind flits around the question of how to get my tombstone inscribed with the letters of a Hebrew name </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I haven’t yet chosen. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m early in the process of conversion, and adopting a name is one of the later steps. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m also, I hope, relatively early in the process of living.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m on the path to becoming Jewish. I’m studying Judaism. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m also making Jewish practices part of my routine, treading a path that isn’t just on the way to Jewish; it is Jewish.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For a young person, studying ballet is called ‘training.’ </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As a runner trains for a marathon, so a ballerina trains to be a swan, all thirty-two fouettés.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But dance training isn’t just about endurance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s teaching a young body to develop a certain way, like a plant growing along a trellis. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s encouraging and developing turnout, teaching those knees and hips to point sideways. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s making ballet ‘second nature.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Like a bean that’s climbed a string, the dancer and her training are inseparable. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Even if the bean could just walk away, if the trellis were removed, the plant would bear its shape.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Training distinguishes someone who studied ballet as a child from one who took it up as an adult</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and any dancer from everyone else.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the dressing room after class, amateur adult dancers transform into gorgeous long-necked people, regal in their clogs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Just walking down the street, a dancer moves differently </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">than someone without that training. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Why are trains called trains? Is it because they follow tracks? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">They are well trained. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Being derailed is disaster for a train. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The train follows tracks—but does it also leave them?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The word for Jewish law is ‘halakha,’ which means ‘the way’ or ‘the path.’ </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The word reminds me of “L’Chah Dodi,” one of the Friday night Shabbat prayers, and with good reason. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Both “L’Chah Dodi’ and ‘halakha’ relate to a Hebrew verb that means ‘to walk’ or ‘to go.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When I’m Jewish, will I walk the walk?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Will I follow the paths left by Jewish people over the course of 2,000 years?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(‘Course’ being another movement-path metaphor.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Halakha is not just a metaphor; it’s a real thing. It can provide guidance to those who seek it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Likewise, for some people, violating Jewish law is a serious matter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">For me, now, though, halakha is mostly an idea. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s the idea of a path that’s comforting,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and the consequences of straying from a metaphorical path are for me to imagine. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Nobody is going to cast me out from my kin—an oft-mentioned biblical threat—for breaking a rule.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I don’t believe a Big Bad Wolf is there waiting for me to stray. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But I may want to follow the path. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s nice to have a path, a well-trodden, clear path, especially when you feel lost </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and every step, every decision, every minute lived feels like hacking through brambles or blazing a trail. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When life feels like that, there’s something appealing about a trellis. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And when you’re scared, you’ll try anything to protect yourself, and your loved ones, from wolves.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Little Red Riding Hood” is a story parents tell their children to teach them, literally, to stay on the path in order to protect them from the dangers of the woods. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">To stay on the path, in the Red Riding Hood story, is to obey your mother, first because the mother told Little Red Riding Hood to stay on the path </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and also because parents’ instructions are the life paths they offer their children, a kind of halakha. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Big Bad Wolf, embodiment of parental fear, is at once overblown and tame.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Getting eaten by a wolf on the way to Grandma’s house is pretty unlikely,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but the idea that threats are Obvious, Predictable, and Avoidable isn’t realistic either. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the story, the Big Bad Wolf hangs out near the path and targets disobedient children. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In the wilderness outside the story, all sorts of dangers—cancer, terrorism, coronavirus, rape—threaten people all the time, and doing what’s recommended, while it may reduce your risk, doesn’t guarantee safety.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It may comfort some Jews to believe that being righteous and following the rules will protect them the way that obeying God protected the characters in the Torah, the ancestors, literal or figurative, of the Jewish people. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I don’t think it will, necessarily. Protection is never guaranteed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But trying to live a good life is, if nothing else, a way to live a good life.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s also an alternative to nihilism and fear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Hungry animals and people with guns and lethal contagions and genocide will be out there whether or not you’re afraid. Maybe the idea of a safe path offers emotional protection. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The actual work of following the rules could also serve as distraction from fear and despair, as something to do when you’re not sure what to do. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I know that’s not the most resounding endorsement.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Torah cycle is another kind of path. I’ve written before about scrolls and the motion of scrolling, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">on a phone or at the bimah. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A metaphor that occurs to me now is Torah as treadmill. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Torah cycle moves forward through the ages, curling up at one end and unrolling at the other. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Also like a treadmill, it never stops. It’s easy to fall behind.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I wanted to say that it’s always moving forward, but that’s not exactly true. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Once a year, during the same service when you read the end of the Torah, you also go back to Genesis, in some cases literally rewinding the entire Torah to get back to the Beginning.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Moses dies, leads the Israelites out of Egypt, waits in a basket; Jacob wrestles with God; Abraham doesn’t kill Isaac, leaves his father’s house; there’s a flood; Adam and Eve eat the apple; and then the apple is whole; and the earth is “unformed and void.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Jews get to return to the beginning of time and start again, through the Torah reading, every year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This is wonderfully appealing</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">because a metaphorical path requires a metaphorical destination.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Where does the halakha lead? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When I think about the destination of my life, I think about death. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My dad once told me that he used to think about time as a conveyor belt carrying him closer and closer to his death.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Life as treadmill, moving one direction only. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Or does it move in a circle, like a model train, like the hands on a clock?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Judaism likes to talk about birth and death as ‘life cycle events.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Although the idea of life as a cycle isn’t unique to Judaism. Biology is full of circular diagrams in which egg leads to offspring leads to egg leads to offspring. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I personally haven’t done what it takes for life to feel cyclical. I haven’t had a child, ensuring that some part of me will start again from the beginning and, hopefully, live on after I die. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I haven’t transformed from child into mother, passing on the wisdom my mother gave me about wolves and manners and responsibility and love. Nor do I teach kids or young adults. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It would be nice if future generations read and learned from my writing, but I’d rather the meaning of my actions didn’t hinge on something so grandiose </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and out of my control. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Though there are things within my control that affect future generations. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There’s something to be said for not littering on the path, even if you don’t set a little one down at beginning of it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">You could say that my interests take me from one path to another,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">In ninth grade, I cut down on my dancing in hopes of getting further along on the violin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Rather than taking two paths at once, I thought I’d travel twice as fast along one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But I didn’t become a professional violinist, nor did I try to when the time came:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I studied biology in college.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">You could say that I never get very far along any path because I keep switching.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">You could say that if I’m trying to get somewhere, I should go straight, make a beeline. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But you could also say that I’m making my own path through life</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And that because my journey defines the path, of course I’m on it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(‘Of course.’)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As for going straight and “getting somewhere,” well,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If death is the destination, I’m in no hurry to arrive. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And yet death preoccupies me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">as does old age. What will I be doing in my sixties?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Will I be dancing? Will I be writing books? Will I be able to retire, if I want?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Or will I be struggling to pay rent writing articles for fees whose value decreases with the passage of time?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Will I feel part of a community? Will I be Jewish? Will I have a partner? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When I die, will someone be there to witness it? To write the obituary and order the tombstone?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There’s a fear of being found dead, days later.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">When I die, will anyone care? Will the people who care know?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I hope these questions communicate something.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It may be all well and good to make your own path, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">but that doesn’t mean ‘everything will be okay.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It might be. It could be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If it’s any consolation, if and when I’m in my sixties, it will be the present tense, a continuation of now, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And I have agency, now. I can walk, ‘take steps,’ as they say </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">(though I remember a friend praising me for ‘taking steps’ to reduce my stress by stopping violin lessons, and I’m not so sure those were the right steps to have taken)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">to try to answer my questions for myself, the way I’d like them answered. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Time does pass. The earth does convey us, round and round. But we aren’t passive, not just passengers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A path is something you can follow or that you can make. But for the path to be worn, for it to look like a path, it has to be walked more than once, likely by multiple creatures. Merriam-Webster’s defines path as “a trodden way.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It’s not one or the other, leaving or following. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A person on a path isn’t alone </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">even if, at a given moment, there is nobody beside them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">They are likely following in someone’s footsteps, and they are definitely leaving footsteps behind. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I’m bad at physics, but I remember that </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">an object moving in a circle, orbiting, isn’t moving in a circular direction. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The direction is always an arrow, straight ahead, it’s just that the force at the center of the orbit </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">gravity</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">constantly changes the object’s direction so that a series of straight paths becomes a circle. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Maybe we living things are not trying to move in circles, or go straight, necessarily; we’re just moving forward</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and at the same time life pulls on us</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">and we go where we go.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There’s humility in that.</span></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-80178062991785352702021-04-11T22:36:00.014-04:002021-04-11T23:31:12.078-04:00On Names and Shame<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/High_Priest_Offering_Sacrifice_of_a_Goat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Black-and-white drawing an altar where a sacrificed goat is billowing smoke. A man in a turban stands in front." border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="640" height="345" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/High_Priest_Offering_Sacrifice_of_a_Goat.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Illustrator of Henry Davenport Northrop's "Treasures of the Bible," 1894, Public domain, via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Priest_Offering_Sacrifice_of_a_Goat.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> I.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the Torah portion <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/topics/parashat-vayikra?tab=sources" target="_blank">Vayikra</a>, God is telling the Israelites that if they do something wrong, they should make a guilt offering called an 'asham' (<a href="https://biblehub.com/hebrew/817.htm" target="_blank">אָשָׁם</a>). This involves sacrificing a goat and</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">—</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">if the asham is similar to other offerings described</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">—</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">burning its fat in the temple. According to God's instructions, if someone inadvertently breaks one of the 613 rules described in the Torah, once they discover their mistake or 'realize their guilt,' they should make a guilt offering. The word 'asham' is used for both guilt and guilt offering. Once that happens, God says, the guilty party "shall be forgiven" (<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Leviticus.5.18?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Leviticus 5:18</a>).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The verb to forgive, 'slicha' (<a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/549" target="_blank">סָלַח</a>) is related to the modern Hebrew way of saying "excuse me" or "I'm sorry." If only life were that simple. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the liturgy of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, 'ashamnu,' meaning we have trespassed or we are guilty, is first on the long list of wrongs to which everyone in the synagogue confesses, aloud, together, and for which we ask forgiveness. The list itself <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/confession-vidui/" target="_blank">is called the Ashamnu</a>. In preparation for Yom Kippur, people traditionally apologize to others we've wronged. Also traditionally, though I doubt that people's emotions follow traditions or rules, if a person apologizes sincerely three times, you have to forgive them; otherwise, the sin, whatever it was, that they committed against you becomes yours. After taking those measures, hopefully, we're forgiven and can try again. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">II.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's no surprise that a word for guilt caught my attention in the Torah. I often feel guilty and wonder if I am guilty. In particular, I worry about cases where I might have done something wrong without meaning to. This is actually the sort of sin this portion is talking about. The language gets quite convoluted describing unwitting sins. For example, "Or when a person utters an oath [. . .] and, though he has known it, the fact has escaped him, but later he realizes his guilt in any of these matters—" (<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Leviticus.5.4?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Leviticus 5:4</a>) A person makes a mistake and has known it and it escapes him and he realizes it again . . . The portion also talks about cases where people don't necessarily "realize their guilt" but "the sin of which [they are] guilty is brought to [their] knowledge" (<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Leviticus.4.23?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Leviticus 4:23</a>). This part sticks out to me because it brings another person into the matter of sin identification. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What really gets me is when I hurt someone unintentionally and they think I did it on purpose. For example, last summer, my therapist thought I said something intended to "poke them," to rub salt in a wound of theirs, and so reacted with a flash of anger. But I hadn't been trying to hurt them. If I poked the therapist, it was inadvertent, more like bumping into someone. I was sorry that I'd hurt this person, and I apologized. I did what I could to make amends, yet I still felt ashamed, guilty. What if, as the therapist suggested, I was at some level being aggressive but couldn't acknowledge it or even consider the possibility? Was the therapist then bringing the sin to my knowledge? Who do you trust—yourself to 'realize your guilt' or someone else to bring it to your attention?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">That this was a therapist-patient situation makes it complicated. But I can't think of an uncomplicated situation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's so clear, like on TV, that people often do things to hurt others. Yet they insist that their intentions are good. In the Hulu series "Little Fires Everywhere," a main character, Elena, leaves her husband and children during a difficult time to drive to New York and dig up dirt about Mia, the woman to whom she's renting a house and whom she's hired to cook dinner for her daily. Also in New York, she has dinner with an old lover and invites him to her hotel room. Elena's husband has repeatedly told her that if she has a problem with Mia, she should just cut ties. But Elena prefers to get in closer to Mia because she's obsessed and curious. The more embroiled with Mia she gets, and her family gets by extension, the more reasons she has to justify the satisfaction of her personal curiosity. Elena claims that she's investigating Mia for the good of her family.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">To the viewer, Elena's motives are obvious. She is doing what she wants to do because she wants to do it, not acting out of obligation. Yet Elena is blind to that, or chooses to be. More generally, to people outside a situation, the motives of the guilty party are often obvious. But I'm not 'the viewer' in my life; I'm me. I might miss something. I suppose the therapist whose feelings I hurt isn't 'the viewer' either.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I think it's important to be able to judge oneself. Given that different people have different opinions based on different experiences, relying on outside opinions to determine when you've done wrong is likely to trigger flip-flopping emotions and a constant need for feedback. Plus, it's far too easy to solicit opinions until you find the one that matches your own, then claim that you've been absolved by a wonderfully objective outside party. That's the worst of both worlds. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Yet when others doubt me, or refuse to affirm my view, it's hard to bear. No, I didn't mean to poke my therapist, as far as I know. But what if I don't know? What if I did mean to? What if I am guilty? The whole thought process produces a feeling of shame.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And the Torah hasn't even gotten to intentional wrongdoing (or I haven't gotten there in it). </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">III.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">A <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%D7%90%D6%B8%D7%A9%D6%B7%D7%81%D7%9D&oq=%D7%90%D6%B8%D7%A9%D6%B7%D7%81%D7%9D&aqs=chrome..69i57.2374j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">Google search for 'asham'</a> pulls up this definition of guilt: "Feeling responsible or regretful for a perceived offense, real or imaginary." Real or imaginary. Maybe that explains why I feel bad even though I don't know exactly what category of wrongdoing—intentional or accidental—I've committed. Maybe I'd even feel guilty about an imaginary sin. According to this definition, that's possible. </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">IV.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">On Yom Kippur, everybody confesses to everything in the first person plural according to the notion that because we are all part of the same society our sins are communal. What one person has done, we have done. After consulting the High Holy Days <a href="https://issuu.com/books-rabbinicalassembly/docs/digital_mahzor/944?fr=sZTU5ZDE3MDIxNjY" target="_blank">prayer book</a> my synagogue used this year, I see that the Ashamnu is a short version of the confession. The longer version has a different name, Al Chet, and includes the line translated as "We have sinned against you on purpose and by mistake." The word for 'by mistake' is 'shegagah' </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://biblehub.com/hebrew/7684.htm" target="_blank">שְׁגָגָה</a>), a word for inadvertent sin that I recognize from Parashat Vayikra. As for 'on purpose,' the Hebrew seems to be "בּזדונ." The "בּ" part means "by" or "through" or "with." Oh here we go: "<a href="https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/02087.html" target="_blank">זָדוֹן</a>" (zadon) is a word meaning "pride, insolence, arrogance." We have sinned against you inadvertently or arrogantly, I guess. Shamelessly.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">V.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">No etymological reference I've found connects the English word 'ashamed' to 'asham' and 'ashamnu.' The <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ashame" target="_blank">actual etymology</a> of ashamed is not enlightening. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In a different Torah portion, I learn that a word that looks like ash (אֵשׁ) means fire in Hebrew. (It's pronounced 'aysh,' according to the <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?t=kjv&strongs=h784" target="_blank">Blue Letter Bible</a>.) Most if not all of the offerings described in this part of the Torah, guilt offering included, are 'by fire.' Perhaps that is the root of asham, then? That doesn't really make sense, given that not all burnt offerings relate to sin. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And it turns out that the Hebrew words 'ash,' and 'asham' aren't related. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But in English 'ash' is the remains of a fire. Could Hebrew fire be its origin?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The question of what 'ash' might mean in Hebrew interests me because of my name. I'll never forget the time a teacher made a dance out of our names and decided to represent me by the tapping of an imaginary cigarette. I hate that smoking is what my name evokes. Fire, on the other hand—that's sexy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But the English word ash does not relate to Hebrew according to etymological sources. Nor is the ash tree one of the first to emerge after a fire, like a phoenix. I wish it were that, but it's not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_(name)#:~:text=Meaning,used%20only%20for%20male%20children." target="_blank">Ashley</a>, according to Wikipedia, is "an English unisex given name, originally a place name and surname. It is derived from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) words æsc (ash) and lēah (meadow, forest clearing)." Though in Hebrew, the Biblical name Leah means 'weary' or maybe also 'cow.' As someone posted on a word forum with regard to the name Leah, "If you don't like the meaning 'weary,' you can always go with 'meadow.'" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">"If you don't like the meaning […] you can always go with 'meadow.'" It has an aphoristic ring to it. When considering words, I certainly have a tendency to go with meanings and word histories that appeal to me in some way. An elaborate etymology, confirmed by multiple sources, that relates to nothing in my mental web just isn't very meaningful to me, with my particular language background and interests. On the other hand, word associations that have no basis in etymology, like that between 'ashamed' and 'asham,' fascinate me. If someone were paying me to investigate etymology, I'd have to be more disciplined. But I don't do this for money, and I'm not really investigating etymology, anyway. I'm looking for personal meaning, connection, between words and my life. I sometimes find that sense of connection in etymology or in what I'm reading, which at the moment happens to be the Torah.</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">VI.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The question of what a name means, especially when the literal meanings are unappealing, is not unrelated to self-esteem or shame. I don't want to be a cigarette or a weary tree lacking phoenix potential. I don't want to be an ash meadow, either, or Ashley Wilkes, or a soap opera character named Ashley. I'd rather be me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And of course that is who I am, like it or not. When a person dies, what remains of them is their name. Not the literal name but what that name means to those who remember a person. That's something I think about when I hear the names of people who've died, recently or during that week in a year past, read aloud at the end of a Jewish service. The name is all that's said, not anything else about the person. What follows is the Mourner's Kaddish, a prayer that praises God and says nothing about death or those who've died. People say Kaddish 'for' those they remember, and I think, though I don't speak from my own experience on this, that saying Kaddish for someone can connect a mourner to God and to the loved one they're remembering. Yet the prayer is not 'about' the person who died. That person is represented by the few syllables of their name. What that name means is a question answered in the minds of those who hear it.</span></p><p></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-77236594618780431402021-03-25T10:41:00.002-04:002021-03-25T10:49:33.733-04:00On Tsuris: A Rock Or a Hard Place?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aHXEQze7udo/YFycNRWbWvI/AAAAAAAAA9g/Ku0vQ7XeSMoBFkN6VZARIq8zXeVGGqVGACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/JoysofYiddishCover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aHXEQze7udo/YFycNRWbWvI/AAAAAAAAA9g/Ku0vQ7XeSMoBFkN6VZARIq8zXeVGGqVGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/JoysofYiddishCover.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This summer, interested in Judaism but not quite sure where to go for information, I read Leo Rosten's <i>The Joys of Yiddish</i> (1968), a paperback I'd long admired in my parents' glass-fronted bookcase. There I encountered the word 'tsuris,' which means "troubles, woes, worries, suffering," according to Rosten. 'Having tsuris' is something to be avoided or bemoaned. The word 'tsuris' comes from the Hebrew 'tsarah,' (feminine), which means trouble, Rosten wrote. Perhaps the old paperback predicted the etymological predicaments I would later throw myself into, where sense and relatedness appealed but irony was what fascinated. Or not.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In any case, fast forward a few months and I was sounding out Psalm 95 on <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Psalms.95.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Sefaria.org</a>. </span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">לְ֭כוּ נְרַנְּנָ֣ה לַיהוָ֑ה נָ֝רִ֗יעָה לְצ֣וּר יִשְׁעֵֽנוּ</span></p><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">"L'chu n'ran'na, Adonai, nariah l'<b>tzur</b> yisheinu," went the transliteration [boldface my own]. "Raise a shout . . . Adonai . . . trouble . . ." I thought. "Wait, <i>trouble?</i>" But no, according to the translation, it's "raise a shout for our rock and deliverer." It's just that the 'rock and deliverer' part,' 'l'tzur yisheinu' (לְצ֣וּר יִשְׁעֵֽנוּ), sounded (or looked, since I was reading) like 'tsuris.' It turns out that 'tsur' or 'tzur' (צ֣וּר) is a masculine Hebrew noun meaning 'rock or cliff,' according to <a href="https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6697.htm" target="_blank">Strong's Concordance</a>. Rock means support, here. Nothing to do with trouble; nothing to see.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div>Some days later, though, I learned that the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim (מִצְרַ֖יִם), <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/self-liberation/" target="_blank">can mean 'straits,' or 'narrow place'</a> and also, figuratively, troubles. Which makes sense, given that according to the story of Exodus, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. I can't let go of my feeling that there has to be a connection between 'tsur' as rock on one hand and 'tsuris,' straits, and 'Mitzrayim' on the other and that this line of thinking is going to cause, well— </div><div><br /></div><div>It makes a kind of sense. When I imagine a strait, I see a person in a boat between two rock faces, trying or hoping not to bash into either one. I think of being 'between a rock and a hard place.' Maybe God is the rock and straits are the hard place. Or is one rock support while two are 'tsuris'?</div><div><br /></div><div>There's an easy way to explain that God is not trouble, etymologically speaking. '<a href="https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6869a.htm" target="_blank">Tsarah</a>,' the Hebrew root of 'tsuris,' is a feminine noun derived from the adjective 'tsar.' The Hebrew word for rock or cliff, on the other hand, is masculine. So they aren't the same. As for whether they could still be somehow related, that's beyond me. (Let's not even get started on the idea that trouble is female.) But what interests me are the implications of the idea that the words for 'rock,' referring to God, and 'troubles' are alike in some way, even if it only seems like that.</div><div><br /></div><div>I thought the psalm was calling God trouble when in fact it praises God for supporting people and delivering them from their troubles (chief among them enslavement in Egypt). The mistake asks, "Could God be both trouble and the one who gets you out of it?" The question points to theodicy, or efforts to reconcile the terrible things that happen in the world with the idea that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good. </div><div><br /></div><div>I like that there's a word for it, theodicy, a word that manages to encompass the problem of evil and efforts to solve it. It's much easier to dismiss religion when you think religious people just don't notice contradictions like the idea of an all-powerful God presiding over a world where horrible things happen. The fact that there's a term for the problem suggests that it has not been ignored as indeed it hasn't. As part of the process of converting to Judaism, I recently read a book (Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme, <i>Finding God: Selected Responses</i>, 2002 edition) that presents diverse Jewish perspectives on God from thinkers like Maimonides, Spinoza, and Mordecai Kaplan, and every single one addresses the problem of evil. These Jewish thinkers have obviously given the issue more consideration than I did, growing up in an atheist family where not believing, and not thinking about it, was the de facto solution.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think 'tsuris' could be just another 'word for it.' It's a term that embodies a contradiction, a rock and a hard place, support and trouble, a narrows and also a way out.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kuiuadPH2yM/YFycOdo7ZVI/AAAAAAAAA9s/YD3V5zCMfoM7F00ma2tOXgSRmjcI7_DbQCPcBGAYYCw/s2048/TsurisPic.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kuiuadPH2yM/YFycOdo7ZVI/AAAAAAAAA9s/YD3V5zCMfoM7F00ma2tOXgSRmjcI7_DbQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/TsurisPic.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Leo Rosten's <i>The Joys of Yiddish</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div></span></div><p></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-6118059140065609222021-03-15T10:35:00.003-04:002021-03-15T11:22:42.860-04:00Etymological Adventures: On Talent<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://live.staticflickr.com/3239/3039555354_dac65cb8a2_b.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt=""Free art talent test" ad" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="332" height="400" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/3239/3039555354_dac65cb8a2_b.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/48889115061@N01/3039555354" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">"Art Talent Test"</a><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"> </span><span data-v-e1c1f65a="" face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; text-align: start;">by <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/48889115061@N01" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Howdy, I'm H. Michael Karshis</a></span><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"> is licensed under </span><a class="photo_license" data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Talent is, arguably, a valuable thing. I say arguably because I feel that talent often stands in opposition to skill. People tend to be called 'talented' when they show promise but are not yet accomplished. I remember as a beginning violin student talent being measured in terms of Suzuki books per year, age versus skill, or how long you'd been taking private lessons relative to how well you played. Things that in hindsight are not important. "Do you like playing?" is more important. Talent is valuable, but it's not everything. It can also go to waste; it can go undeveloped. It doesn't necessarily do a person or the world any good, but it represents the potential for future skill and creativity. That potential certainly is valuable. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So I was delighted but not surprised to learn in last week's Torah portion that talent actually is a measure of value: It's a particular weight of gold (or silver or copper). The Israelites, who have left Egypt and received the commandments, are constructing a sanctuary. For this purpose, a man named Bezalel makes a lamp stand "out of a talent of pure gold" (<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.37.24?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Exodus 37:24</a>). Talent, here, seems to be a unit of measure. Highlight the Hebrew word on Sefaria and it will tell you that it means "a round weight, talent (of gold, silver, bronze, iron)." Yet it could be a double entendre. God has, according to Moses, "endowed [Bezalel] with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft" (<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.35.31?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">Exodus 35:31</a>). The man had talent, and it went into the menorah along with the gold. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">According to <i>Chambers Etymological Dictionary</i>, the literal meaning of talent as money came first. Talent as "special natural ability, aptitude" arose in the 15th century, a figurative use of the original term "taken from the parable of the talents in the Bible (Matthew 25:14-30)," according to <i>Chambers</i>. No mention of Bezalel, alas. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:14-30&version=KJV " target="_blank">story</a>, a 'lord' gives out several bags of gold to three of his servants. Two of the servants take their literal talents, invest them, and wind up twice as rich as they began. But the servant who receives only one bag of gold digs a hole and buries it, earning nothing but disapproval from the lord, who had hoped to profit from his servants' investments. I suppose the story shows that you should develop your talent. On the other hand, the lord disbursing gold in this story doesn't seem like such a great guy. He's described as someone who harvests where he hasn't sown. Maybe I, too, would want to bury his money. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The lord gave the third servant a talent of gold. I'm not sure how much that's worth, but a talent of silver is equivalent to three thousand shekels, according to the website <a href="https://www.learnreligions.com/shekel-worth-its-weight-in-gold-3977062" target="_blank">Learn Religions</a>. In biblical times, a shekel was a day's wage. The same website says that a talent was something like 20 years' earnings for a laborer. This doesn't quite compute (3,000 shekels per talent/365 shekels per year=about 8 years per talent), but suffice it to say that talent is precious and not easily earned.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I don't actually think it's possible to <i>earn</i> talent. A musician of moderate ability who works all her life may never play as well as an eight-year-old prodigy, for example. And even if, technically, a person reaches a certain level, will they have 'it,' the je ne sais quois? I'm skeptical. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I do, however, believe that talent demands work and that work picks up where talent leaves off. If you truly bury your talent, that is, don't even pursue the area in which you are gifted, you can't possibly succeed in that area. Not only that but you may miss out on experiences that would be valuable to you, regardless of how others might judge them. On the other hand, someone with less talent and a lot of dedication may fare quite well. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What does it mean to "fare well" or "succeed"? These matters are subjective, and what matters most is probably personal satisfaction. Hopefully the person who buries their talent doesn't simultaneously use it to measure their self-worth (though I think if it can be done, people do it). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I had some talent as a violinist, but I put it down in college and focused on something else. I still play the fiddle sometimes, less on my own and more when it's a way to get together with a group of people. My ability to learn tunes by ear serves me well. I also go for long periods without playing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">A biblical talent weighed something like 75 pounds. I can understand someone wanting to put it down. The feeling that you have all this potential (and I think it's easy to overestimate your own talent) and that turning out to be anything less than extraordinary will be a disappointment is emotionally heavy. Yet when I pick up the violin now, I'm not re-shouldering a burden, or I try not to make it about that. It's about enjoying music.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Skill comes from both talent and experience, yet I don't want to seek an exchange rate between the two. It certainly does take time and work, maybe even a Gladwellian 10,000 hours, maybe even 8 or 20 years, to really develop a skill, no matter how talented you are. A more talented person might achieve a given level slightly faster, or not. But at a certain point, when the answer to "how long have you played the violin?" is 30 years and it no longer relates to how well you play but to the length of your life, it no longer matters exactly how fast you progressed through the Suzuki books in elementary school. As for Bezalel's menorah, what matters is not how quickly he made it, how many years he'd studied as a goldsmith before making it, how old he was when God chose him to make it, whether or not other more experienced goldsmiths were passed over for the job, none of which the Torah tells us, but the fact that he made it and that it served a purpose. As they say, talent's overrated.</span></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-28353266642431403352021-03-04T10:55:00.002-05:002021-03-15T09:47:20.644-04:00Etymological Adventures: On Lots and Happenstance<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/2_Mishloach_Manot.jpg/800px-2_Mishloach_Manot.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="2 Purim baskets" border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="800" height="258" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/2_Mishloach_Manot.jpg/800px-2_Mishloach_Manot.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Yoninah" target="_blank">Yoninah</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2_Mishloach_Manot.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">"Happy Purim!" Jews and non-Jew celebrants, like myself, greeted each other last week. We might as well have been saying "happy lots," "happy fate," or "lucky fate." A religious holiday run through with the language of chance, Purim, the Festival of Lots, made me consider how we think about luck in our lives. Is chance unfeeling math at work? Or a manifestation of the divine? What is the source of a 'happy lot'? Wherever it comes from, chance, as a concept, is ubiquitous.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In biblical times, people engaged with chance and probability by 'casting lots.' The practice <a href="https://www.womeninthebible.net/bible-archaeology/casting-lots/" target="_blank">may have involved</a> drawing stones—like straws—to decide who would do something or throwing down stones and interpreting how they fell to reach a conclusion. Casting lots is similar to gambling, hence the related word, lottery. In the Purim story, the evil Haman <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Esther.3.7?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=bi" target="_blank">cast lots</a>, called purim in Hebrew, to decide on which day to kill all the Jews in Shushan. On that very date, as it turned out in the story, the Jews prevailed, making Purim a happy holiday. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Happy comes from the English 'hap,' which means "chance, fortune, luck." The verb happen has the same root.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Purim, the Hebrew word for lots, can also mean 'portions.' It so happens that 'sending portions,' or '<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Esther.9.22?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">mishloach manot</a>,' is a Purim tradition; people give each other baskets of hamantaschen and other delectables. 'Manot' (singular: mana) means portions. Unlike purim, though, manot does not also means lots.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Casting lots is a matter of probability and statistics, random chance. How distant that feels from the idea, which I think of as being at the heart of religion, that things happen for a reason. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I do think of chance as controlling what happens, to an extent. Yet things do not happen quite as statistics predict. Random number generators produce strings of repeats; flipped coins repeatedly land on their heads. In the long run, the textbooks say, reality operates closer to statistical prediction, but no run is infinite. In what happens—and whom it happens to—there's always an element of luck. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Statistics tell you what the distribution is: that there is a bell curve and that average values occur more often than extremes. But what controls an individual's position on the curve? Who is the distributor? In this human drama, who is in charge of casting?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Some people believe the answer is God. In the Bible, people cast lots not as a way of letting chance decide but in order to determine God's will. (That said, God is not mentioned in the Purim story; it's said that God is masked within it.) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">For me, the idea that statistics could be God-given raises the question of whether God is actually up there flipping coins. In Judaism, there's much talk of God 'dealing fairly' with people. One interpretation of that phrase is that God is giving every individual attention and consideration. But another take on it is that God is the dealer in the sky, distributing fates with a certain cold objectivity. The latter doesn’t strike me as a metaphor of fairness. Or is it the ultimate fairness, as long as God shuffles the cards?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">'Bonne chance' means good luck in French. The phrase appeals to me because it expresses the idea that luck and chance are the same thing and not unqualifiedly good. Yes, lucky refers to good luck and Fortune smiles—but sometimes she frowns. 'By chance' in French is 'par hasard.' Chance, with a hint of peril.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When I write, I sometimes feel as if I'm throwing words at the page in hopes that they will land in meaningful arrangements. I think about words and their origins and hope to make sense of them. Often I can, but not always. I originally thought mana, the singular word for portion in the phrase mishloach manot, might also refer to the food that God provided the Israelites during their desert wanderings. God apportioned food, made allotments. Yet although a Purim basket might feel like a kind of <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.16.31?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=bi" target="_blank">manna</a>, "a usually sudden or unexpected source of pleasure, gratification, or gain" or "food miraculously supplied," as <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manna" target="_blank">Merriam-Webster</a> defines it, the manna of the desert and the mana of Purim and mishloach manot are not etymologically related, as far as I can tell. The Hebrew words are different genders. Nice try, I think to myself. Better luck next time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What is luckier, though, really—for words with common origins to sound alike and have similar meanings? Or for etymological strangers to connect? The former is about as "lucky" as learning that you resemble your great-grandmother. The latter, though—for words without a common root to not only sound alike but also relate meaningfully to each other—that's really something. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manna" target="_blank">divinely supplied spiritual nourishment</a>." Or maybe I would. </span></p><p></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-87670793730869590062021-02-23T10:23:00.013-05:002021-02-23T21:28:01.379-05:00Etymological Adventures: On Scrolls and Scrolling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://live.staticflickr.com/2789/4118168170_943eaa0c0c.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Torah scroll with yad (pointer)" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="372" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/2789/4118168170_943eaa0c0c.jpg" title=""Yad and Sefer Torah" by Rachel-Esther is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23500585@N08/4118168170" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">"Yad and Sefer Torah"</a><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"> </span><span data-v-e1c1f65a="" face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; text-align: start;">by <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23500585@N08" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rachel-Esther</a></span><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"> is licensed under </span><a class="photo_license" data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 2.0</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When you scroll on your phone, what do you imagine happens to the text—or Tweets or photos—you can’t see? I imagine the material on the screen continuing straight up, forever. But the verb ‘to scroll’ suggests something else—that our Instagram and Facebook feeds are rolling up behind the tops of our phone screens once they slip out of sight and are at the same time unrolling before our eyes from an invisible reel at the bottom. It’s as if behind-the-scenes work, akin to the little people who live inside the television, is unfolding at the edges of our phones. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Scroll is my word for the week. It’s on my mind because the Jewish holiday of Purim is this Thursday, and it's a Purim tradition for the Scroll of Esther—a.k.a. Megillat Esther a.k.a. ‘the megillah’—to be read aloud in synagogues. The Scroll of Esther, or Book of Esther, is one of the Kethuvim (Writings) and is within </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">the non-Torah part of the Jewish Bible. It tells the story of how Jews in Persia escaped extermination by Haman, the king’s angry advisor (and namesake of hamantaschen cookies), thanks to the titular Queen Esther. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am a non-Jew learning about Judaism, and t</span><span style="font-family: arial;">his</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> will be my first time celebrating Purim. There are lots of things I don’t know about the holiday, such as whether the megillah is actually a separate physical scroll or whether it’s connected to other writings the way the five books of the Torah are all written on one scroll. I also don’t know how long it takes to read ‘the whole megillah’ (Purim is where that expression comes from). But what I have learned and can report here is that the word megillah means scroll in Hebrew. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The Hebrew root of megillah means ‘to roll,’ according to <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%92%D7%9C%D7%9C#Hebrew" target="_blank">Wiktionary</a>, which in turn cites the biblical lexicon <i>Strong’s Concordance</i>. This seems quite appropriate for a scroll, a document through which you move by rolling up the part you’ve just read and unrolling what’s to come. So it is for the English word scroll, which has ‘roll’ contained within it. The origins of the English word—from Old French escroe, “scrap, roll of parchment,” according to the <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/scroll" target="_blank">Online Etymological Dictionary</a>—are not particularly enlightening, except for this one tidbit: “Sense of ‘show a few lines at a time" (on a computer or TV screen) first recorded 1981.’” 1981!—the year the first IBM personal computer came out, according to this <a href="https://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html" target="_blank">Live Science article</a>, but decades before the iPhone. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Before I ever attended a Torah service, which is something I’ve only ever done online, I imagined a scroll as something a courtly figure would unroll vertically, like a roll of toilet paper, and that if the document were too long, the end would drag on the ground. I was surprised, then, to learn that a Torah scroll has two rollers, one at each end, and that what you’re reading is between them. You don’t read down a Torah scroll the way I’d imagined a courtier reading a scroll from top to bottom (or the way you read your phone). To be more precise, you don’t read the Torah scroll in the direction of its scrolling. Instead, you read in columns across it, columns perpendicular to the way it rolls and unrolls. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://live.staticflickr.com/3619/3370859327_ca39731af9_b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A Torah scroll with its two rollers and a yad" border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/3619/3370859327_ca39731af9_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24298372@N04/3370859327" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">"Torah"</a><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> </span><span data-v-e1c1f65a="" face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">by <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24298372@N04" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Lawrie Cate</a></span><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"> is licensed under </span><a class="photo_license" data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Like on a phone, though, the viewing area of a Torah scroll is always roughly the same size, limited, I guess, by the size of the bimah, the platform from which it is read in the synagogue. Another similarity between reading a Torah scroll and scrolling on a phone is the role of the finger. On the phone, you flick the feed along with your index finger. You keep your place on a Torah scroll with a miniature hand on a stick, called a yad, which has its own miniature pointer finger extended. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VW9TK7-pTsQ/YDUQPOdgXnI/AAAAAAAAA8U/BwXx4_7OwdciJJg9PpxDRTEZswlD1s0QgCPcBGAYYCw/s1280/ScrollingScreenshot.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Screenshot of a phone viewing the Book of Esther on Sefaria.org" border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VW9TK7-pTsQ/YDUQPOdgXnI/AAAAAAAAA8U/BwXx4_7OwdciJJg9PpxDRTEZswlD1s0QgCPcBGAYYCw/w225-h400/ScrollingScreenshot.png" width="225" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Of course you can read the Torah, or the Book of Esther, on your phone. In that case, then, the verb ‘scroll’ is particularly appropriate. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://live.staticflickr.com/1066/921738874_3417a7d684.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="A violin" border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/1066/921738874_3417a7d684.jpg" /></a></div><div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7147684@N03/921738874" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">"Violin"</a><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span data-v-e1c1f65a="" face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;">by <a data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7147684@N03" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">pellaea</a></span><span face=""Source Sans Pro", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"> is licensed under </span><a class="photo_license" data-v-e1c1f65a="" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich" rel="noopener" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #e23600; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0</a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>It occurred to me as I searched for photos to accompany this blog post that not all scrolls have anything to do with reading, or even looking at photos. I may be learning about Judaism, but perhaps I'm forgetting about the violin, something to which I am not new at all and something that, as the Creative Commons image search tool reminded me when I typed in 'scroll', also has one. You can't roll or unroll it. It's carved in the wood. It's within the scroll, however, that the instrument's strings are wound and unwound in the process of tuning. A balance is reached between the strings; they have concordances between them. Tuning is something delicate and important, a sacred scrolling.</span></div></div><p></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-18972534938638674092021-02-14T10:57:00.007-05:002021-02-14T16:09:25.984-05:00Etymological Adventures: Doff and don<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This week, I was writing an article about a shoe designed to be easy to put on and take off. Ah, the frustration of writing that phrase, to put on and take off. I wanted to shorten it: put on and off, take on and off. But you don't 'put off' or 'take on' your shoes unless you're in some sort of argument or fight, with your footwear. What I really wanted to write was that this shoe is 'easy to doff and don.' But some readers might not understand me if I wrote that, and I wasn't willing to sacrifice clarity for brevity (if making the piece two words shorter can be considered real progress toward brevity). So let's go on and on about doff and don in a separate article! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Doff and don do indeed mean to take off and to put on, respectively. They are contractions of 'do off' and 'do on,' according to <i>Chambers Etymological Dictionary</i>. 'Do' once had the meaning 'to put or place,' it seems. The <i>Shorter O</i> lists 'put or place' as the first meaning of 'do.' It then goes on to say that this meaning is "<i>obs.</i> exc. <i>dial.</i>, with preps. (see do off etc. below)." I think the <i>Shorter O</i> would do well to pay a bit more attention to clarity, here. Expanding the abbreviations, the <i>Shorter O</i> is saying that the put or place meaning of do is obsolete except for dialect-related uses with prepositions. Prepositions such as off and on! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Memorizing the prepositions was something many students of my generation did at some point. I did that exercise in the 8th grade. A preposition, we learned, is something a squirrel could do to a tree. Well, not exactly. The squirrel goes _____ the tree, the blank being the preposition. The squirrel goes around the tree. The squirrel goes up the tree. The squirrel [tries to go] through the tree. As I contemplated writing this post, I of course wondered what other 'do + preposition' constructions might be out there waiting to be discovered. For ease of contraction, the prepositions would need to start with vowels. There aren't many exciting options. Maybe we could start using 'dup' as a contraction of 'do up,' as in 'I dupped my hair because it was hot.' Or 'dover' could mean 'do over.' </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It turns out that 'dup' is already a word, albeit an archaic one. This contraction of 'do up' means to open, according to the<i> Shorter O</i>. Let's see that squirrel try to dup the tree. Dover is also a word. According to the <i>Shorter O</i>, to dover means to "doze or be unconscious" or to cause to doze or be unconscious. Or to "wander aimlessly or confusedly; walk unsteadily." Dover can also mean, as a noun, "a light or fitful sleep; a doze," according to the <i>Shorter O</i>. Dover's powder, the next entry in the <i>Shorter O</i>, is "a mixture of opium and ipecacuanha." You might think it would be used to dover people, that is, put them to sleep, especially given the opium content, but no. It was named after physician Thomas Dover. According to the definition in the<i> Shorter O</i>, Dover's powder was used to ease pain. Or induce sweating. I don't think the tree will be in need of dovering from the squirrel. For now, I will give the squirrel a break and sign off. </span></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-24737507466983527432021-02-07T11:04:00.006-05:002021-02-07T16:48:12.271-05:00Etymological Adventures: Biblio- and Beyond<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yrBVG157H4o/YCAPZ-hu6BI/AAAAAAAAA70/_LrfbJIoXB8YCGUbWqcND5Fi8e8FmPb-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/biblepic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yrBVG157H4o/YCAPZ-hu6BI/AAAAAAAAA70/_LrfbJIoXB8YCGUbWqcND5Fi8e8FmPb-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/biblepic.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Bibliophile. Bibliography. Of all word roots, I'd say that biblio-, meaning book, is one of the most basic, for me, anyway. I feel like I've known what it meant for a long time. Why, then, did it take 36 years for me to notice that the word Bible might potentially have the very same root? That's not an interesting question, but the connection between Bible and biblio, on the other hand, is very cool.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Yes, these words all have the same root. Merriam-Webster gives me a game-of-telephone-like history of the word bible (Middle English from Old French from Medieval Latin from Greek) that goes all the way back to the Greek byblos, meaning papyrus, or book. Byblos, in turn, was the name of an ancient city that exported papyrus. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31MPFQCNpRL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31MPFQCNpRL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When the connection between Bible and biblio hit me, it reminded me of something I read in <i>The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief</i>, by literary critic James Wood. Wood describes the belief, indeed still held by many people, that the Bible was a God-given account of the history of the world, the absolute truth. He calls this idea the old estate, and in his book, particularly in the introductory essay "The Freedom of Not Quite" and in the title essay, Wood describes how novels broke the old estate, or cracked it, anyway. When the Bible was considered truth, it perhaps didn't occur to people that books could be anything other than true. Novels, Wood says--and particularly novels about religious figures--changed that. All of a sudden there were these books that felt as true or truer than the Bible, yet they were entirely made up by ordinary people. Was the Bible made up, too? The existence of novels made people wonder. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's as if, it seems to me, book originally meant the word of God as recorded by prophets. Maybe, at one time, book was a sufficient description for a religion's foundational, even holy, text. Once regular people started writing books that were patently fictional, it became necessary to find words to distinguish The Book from others. At the same time, as Wood points out in "The Freedom of Not Quite," many people also had and still have reverence for fiction, further complicating the task of distinguishing what's holy and what's not. "At the high point of the novel's rise, the Gospels began to be read, by both writers and theologians, as a set of fictional tales--as a kind of novel. Simultaneously, fiction became an almost religious activity (though not of course with religion's former truth-value, for this was no longer quite believed in)," Wood writes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Other books do have other names: novel, memoir, stories, essays. Nonfiction is defined relative to fiction, almost as if fiction is the default. We don't have, for example, books categorized as truth and untruth. Yet the Bible, if you think about its derivation, is still basically called The Book. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">PS: <i>Chambers Etymological Dictionary</i> says that in addition to book, the root biblio- can refer to the Bible, "as in <i>bibliolatry</i> = excessive reverence for the Bible." So there you go.</span></p>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-33923572400588736002021-01-31T10:55:00.001-05:002021-01-31T10:57:28.202-05:00Etymological Adventures: Amen<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Amen. It’s a sign of agreement. It’s the end of a prayer. It’s a word I never thought to wonder what it meant in some other language because its meaning in English is so clear. But yesterday it occurred to me to wonder, and what I found was meaningful in more ways than one. In Hebrew, I learned, amen (אָמַן) is a verb that means to be faithful, stand firm, or to believe. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As I am currently learning about Judaism, I discovered this reading the weekly Torah portion, Beshalach, in which God parts the waters of the Red Sea and the Israelites cross over into the Promised Land. I was reading in English, but a particular phrase caught my attention and I wondered what it was in Hebrew. In English, the phrase was “[. . . the people] believed in the Lord and in Moses” (from Exodus 14:31), <a href="https://www.chabad.org/parshah/torahreading.asp?aid=2492619&p=4&jewish=Beshalach-Torah-Reading.htm" target="_blank">as translated on Chabad.org</a>. Since believing in God is, in any Bible, an important idea, I wondered how to say ‘believe in God’ in Biblical Hebrew. What I saw was that the Hebrew word for believe looked to my eyes—which know the Hebrew alphabet but no grammar—a whole lot like amen. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Over at Sefaria.org, an amazing hyperlinked repository of Jewish texts, the phrase <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.14.31?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">was translated</a> “they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses.” Yet when I clicked on the key Hebrew word and the definition popped up on the right of the screen, there it was: amen, a verb meaning, among other things, to trust or believe. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So amen is an expression of faith or belief. It’s not so surprising, now that I know. Yet I didn’t know. I didn’t really think it meant anything. I thought it was a word whose meaning was self-evident, like ‘ouch!’ </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">On that note, what part of speech is it, anyway, at the end of a prayer? It doesn’t seem like a verb as used in that context. It’s just something people say, as in “and we say: Amen.” Merriam-Webster says <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amen" target="_blank">amen is an interjection</a> (like ‘ouch,’ I might add). Find amen in a prayer on Sefaria, and the Klein Dictionary will tell you that it can mean “so be it, truly, certainly,” which make it sound, ‘so be it’ aside, like an adverb. Sort of like ‘indeed.’ </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When amen means ‘so be it,’ it doesn’t necessarily signify agreement. It can be an expression of resignation. In the <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.119b.3?ven=William_Davidson_Edition_-_English&lang=bi" target="_blank">story of the two angels</a> who accompany someone home from a Friday night shabbat service, one angel who wants the house to be neat and tidy and ready for 25 restful hours, the other who wants it to be messy, one of the angels has to concede to the other when their person arrives home to the house, in whatever state it may be in, and the angel does that by saying ‘amen.’ </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">One of my favorite things about learning new words is that they tend to pop up everywhere, and so it was with amen once I discovered its various Hebrew meanings. I found it in a <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Psalms.96.13?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" target="_blank">psalm sung on shabbat</a>, and the interesting thing about that was that in that case, God was the one being described as being faithful, to people. The word amen can refer to people believing in or being faithful to God, but it can also indicate the other half of an apparently reciprocal relationship. I find that satisfying.
</span></div>Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-91732117767904030642019-04-30T21:07:00.000-04:002019-04-30T21:21:32.893-04:00Given the Chance, Might Emerence Have Forgiven Magda in THE DOOR?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_tBaSxFbRro/XMjdkCxwaMI/AAAAAAAAA1c/PAh9ndSU5NkFKW6p64l2XTZ8JltcVoRIgCLcBGAs/s1600/The_Door_NY_Times_Seal_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_tBaSxFbRro/XMjdkCxwaMI/AAAAAAAAA1c/PAh9ndSU5NkFKW6p64l2XTZ8JltcVoRIgCLcBGAs/s320/The_Door_NY_Times_Seal_1024x1024.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Magda
Szabó’s novel <i>The Door</i> opens and
closes with a dream. Last night, I dreamed about <i>The Door</i>, sort of. I dreamed that I was in the kitchen with another
woman at work cooking, and even though I knew I wasn’t expected to help, I also
felt that to <i>not</i> help would be a
weakness, a character flaw, and an absence of action that I’d regret. So there
I was, chopping an onion or radish or something with this other woman nearby,
half feeling pleased about helping, half worrying the woman would scold me for the
way I was doing it. She didn’t. Then I was putting something in the freezer and
noticed ice-cube trays but also thought to myself that I shouldn’t snoop in the
woman’s freezer. The refrigerator, after all, was off limits altogether. I
regarded its beige front. Nobody but Emerence opened the door of that fridge.
Only she knew what was inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door </i>(New York Review Books, 2015, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix), the caretaker Emerence opens the
door of her flat to almost no one. Only the novel’s narrator, a writer named
Magda, sees inside while Emerence is alive. Emerence works for Magda, taking
care of her apartment while Magda writes, and they become close. Emerence comes
to trust Magda enough to decide to leave the contents of her flat to Magda
after she dies. Unfortunately for everyone, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">SPOILER
ALERT </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">SPOILER ALERT </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">SPOILER ALERT </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">SPOILER ALERT</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">before
that, Magda manages to betray Emerence by tricking her into opening her door
at a critical moment, a decision with devastating consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As
evidenced by my dream, I think about Emerence a lot. I imagine how I would
treat Emerence if she were in my life—what mistakes I would make, how I might
avoid them. I failed to give up my seat to an Emerence on the train the other
day, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i> in hand, no less.
Hopefully next time, I’ll do better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since
Emerence in my life is not an individual but every encounter that forces a quick
decision about how to treat people, I do, unlike Magda, have second chances.
Yet I wonder, is it possible that Emerence might have forgiven Magda</span><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">given her a second chance</span><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 12pt;">—</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">if Magda
had done just one thing differently? I’d like to think so, of course. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don’t
normally think about “what might have been” had a character in a book acted
differently. Asking that question isn’t going to deepen understanding of the
book; it’s an idea for a different book. And I think it’s important to stay
close to the text when exploring what books are trying to say. If you can’t
back an assertion up with a quote, maybe you shouldn’t make it at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But sometimes
a story, like a myth, exists outside a single form. Now that I’ve read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i> and watched the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194577/" target="_blank">movie version</a>,
in which Helen Mirren plays Emerence, I’m thinking less about the novel and
more about the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">story </i>of the close yet
combustible relationship between Magda and Emerence, and how it comes to its
bad end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C4Wy7zjUygU/XMjuCIxHCHI/AAAAAAAAA1w/OKMxC9-ER6oKWWYgDu8KfizDA69AsdC7ACLcBGAs/s1600/TheDoorPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="675" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C4Wy7zjUygU/XMjuCIxHCHI/AAAAAAAAA1w/OKMxC9-ER6oKWWYgDu8KfizDA69AsdC7ACLcBGAs/s320/TheDoorPoster.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you’ve
read or watched <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i>, you
probably remember the plot: Magda hires Emerence, who is also the caretaker
more generally in the Budapest neighborhood, to take care of housekeeping so
that Magda can focus on writing. Despite being Emerence’s employer Magda is
rarely, if ever, in control. The power struggle is constant, but at the two
women also care deeply about each other. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">When
Emerence lets Magda into her flat that one time, she tells Magda what she wants
to happen after her death and explains that when the time comes, Magda is to
euthanize the cats that Emerence has been keeping, against regulations, behind
her door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then
Emerence gets very sick and withdraws into her flat, which soon begins to
smell. It seems that Emerence is going to die without medical intervention, so
Magda tricks her into opening her door on the pretext of collecting a dead cat when
the true purpose is to get Emerence to the hospital. In a second betrayal on
Magda’s part, as soon as the door is open, Magda rushes off to go do a TV
interview and, later, to accept a literary award. Meanwhile Emerence, who’s had
a stroke and is unable to walk, is taken to the hospital and the flat she
guarded so closely is exposed to the neighborhood. In Magda’s absence, Emerence’s place—now
filled with rotten food and waste both human and cat—is ransacked and
“decontaminated,” all the furniture burned. Magda hopes to clean up the mess
after collecting her award, but by the time she arrives with her good
intentions and cleaning supplies, the damage is done. Next, Magda lies to
Emerence about what has happened, pretending that nobody but her has seen inside the
flat, that Magda has cleaned everything up and is feeding the cats, which have in
fact scattered Also, Magda goes to Greece for a week, as a Hungarian delegate
to a peace conference, while Emerence is in the hospital. Once Emerence learns
of Magda’s lies, she tells Magda to go to hell. Magda leaves the hospital, and
Emerence dies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 2.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of this happens in both the book and the movie. But as
you might guess from my preamble, I found some meaning in the movie beyond what
I found in the book on first reading—a meaning that suggests there’s hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The scene
that’s different in the movie and gives the film version of the story its
optimistic end is one where Magda and Eva Grossman, who also wronged Emerence,
visit Emerence’s grave. Emerence took care of baby Eva during the Holocaust,
after Eva’s parents went abroad and her grandparents, Emerence’s employers,
took cyanide. Eva is supposed to visit Emerence during a business trip from
the U.S., but the trip is canceled. So Emerence makes a feast for Eva—to serve
at Magda’s apartment, it so happens—opens her cautious heart up to love or
disappointment, and Eva stands her up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the
book, the pivotal graveside scene occurs as a sort of flash-forward in the
narrative, just after the scene where Eva fails to show up for lunch. Near the
grave, Eva lights candles, but the wind blows them out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Every
candle flame died the moment it flared into life, as if Emerence were blowing
it back in her face with the full force of her lungs. And on countless other
occasions after her death it was as if Emerence turned on her ghostly heel and
put two fingers up at our guilty consciences, and our attempts to approach
her.<br /> </span><o:p><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></o:p></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And that’s
it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But in the
movie, the scene occurs at the very end. Yes, it’s a terrible storm. Then Eva
says four words—“Emerence, please forgive me.”—and immediately, the wind and
rain die down. Magda looks puzzled and raises her eyes to watch as the storm
clouds make for blue sky, white clouds, and sun. It seems that a sentence from
a different scene in the book has been repurposed for the end of the movie.
“The smile that—against every logical expectation—lit up her face, was like the
sun breaking through steel-grey clouds.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the
book, this particular smile is directed at Magda the night of the Eva Grossman debacle.
When Emerence learns that Eva’s not coming, she makes a terrible scene, letting
the dog eat the food prepared for Eva from Magda’s late mother’s precious
dishes, then beating the dog, all of this in Magda’s mother’s special
room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Magda tries to assert her control
by asking Emerence to leave and then, later, by bringing Emerence back the
leftovers that Emerence had put away in Magda’s fridge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But after
midnight, lying awake next to her husband and thinking about Emerence, Magda
feels as if, somehow, she’s in the wrong. So she puts on clothes and goes over
to Emerence’s flat, where a light is still on. “I wanted to say something fine
and conciliatory, such as that I had no idea what was happening, or had
happened earlier, but I was truly sorry that, when she was so upset that
afternoon, I hadn’t been more understanding,” Magda writes. But she can’t find
the words for that: “Nothing came to mind. I only know what I have to do on
paper.” Instead of the apologizing, Magda says to Emerence, “I’m hungry. . . . Have
you anything left to eat?” On the surface, this is a bizarre and forward thing
for Magda to do, disturbing her employee, at the employee’s home, for a snack
in the middle of the night, but it ends up being perfect for the circumstances.
Emerence is delighted, hence the smile, and serves Magda a meal on her porch.
This is not just any snack. Magda symbolically stands in for Eva, and Magda,
unlike Eva that day, is grateful. So is Emerence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the
movie, the sun comes out after Eva asks for forgiveness. In the movie, Emerence
smiles on Eva from heaven. Emerence forgives Eva! It’s beautiful. It also makes
me wonder: Might Emerence also forgive Magda? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In both the
book and the movie, when Emerence dies, she is furious at Magda: furious at
Magda for tricking her into opening her door when what she wanted was to die
alone and without the shame of being seen incapacitated; furious at Magda for leaving
her at her most vulnerable to go do a TV interview; furious at Magda for lying
about what happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the
awards ceremony she has left Emerence to attend, Magda thanks Emerence for
taking care of her and her husband so that she can write. Emerence isn’t
impressed. “Get out. Go and make a speech on television. Write a novel, or run
off back to Athens,” Emerence says to Magda in the hospital, the last time they
see each other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the
large scale, that’s what Magda (Szabó) does. From what I’ve read online (see Claire Messud's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/books/review/the-door-by-magda-szabo.html" target="_blank">review</a> in <i>The New York Times</i>), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i> is an autobiographical novel.
Magda writes a book in which she honors Emerence and expresses her regret for
the way their relationship ended. What Magda doesn’t do is apologize to
Emerence and ask forgiveness, in person, at the hospital, when she has the
chance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think
some mixture of shame and pride held Magda back. I wonder if Magda believed to
some extent that she didn’t deserve to be forgiven. The last words of the book,
part of Magda’s recurring nightmare, are, “My efforts are in vain.” I think
that’s how Magda felt about any attempt to apologize to Emerence. I do believe
she felt regret. Listen to the way she describes Emerence’s reaction to her
when they are face to face. Emerence has started to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">She said nothing, but I understood all the
same that if I could have accepted that in her impotence she had chosen death,
and I had not made her degradation public, while she was still alive, before
the street which had held her in such high esteem, then she would have felt I
loved her.</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">These words don’t say “I regret what I did,” but they nonetheless
express remorse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet when
Magda is face to face with Emerence, she gets defensive. When Emerence covers
her head with a towel as Magda arrives at her hospital room, Magda is annoyed.
“For the first time, the very first time since the whole avalanche of events
had been set in motion, I was filled with resentment and my self-reproach began
to fray at the edges. For Heaven’s sake, of what crime was she accusing me?
That I hadn’t left her to die?” Magda’s thoughts continue in this vein. “Don’t
expect penance from me,” she thinks to herself on one occasion, as Emerence
berates her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Magda does
not show penance. “At all events, I’ll phone you if she needs you,” a nurse
offers, as Magda is leaving one day. Magda tells the nurse not to bother, that
Emerence “won’t accept anything from me, either practically or emotionally.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But that’s
not really true. When Emerence finds out that Magda went to Greece, she is
astonished. “You went, when you didn’t even know if I would live?” Magda asks.
Sure, Emerence was mad at Magda. But underneath, she still wanted Magda there.
Emerence’s throwing a towel over her head once or twice shouldn’t have undone
their entire twenty-year relationship. But that brusque gesture, combined with
Magda’s shame over the betrayal, was enough to make Magda withdraw when she
should have stayed. Even if Emerence had said “I never want to see you again”
(Emerence did say, “Get out of here. . . . Go to hell.”) it would have been a
mistake for Magda to believe her and leave. She could have sat in the hallway,
or in a waiting room, or something. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instead,
Magda leaves and later that evening, while Magda is setting the table for
dinner at home, Emerence dies. This is how they parted, as Magda recalls it: “I
could see very little of her as I went out. I didn’t say goodbye. I ran home in
the rain, wondering all the time what else I should have said. But I could
think of nothing.”</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s only
in writing that Magda can express her feelings. Emerence, on the other hand,
“could barely read” and values physical work above all else. What might Emerence think of Szabó’s novel? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Szabó doesn’t
kid herself that she’s writing for Emerence or that Emerence would care about
her book. “This book is written not for God, who knows the secrets of my heart,
nor for the shades of the all-seeing dead who witness both my waking life and
my dreams. I write for other people,” Magda writes in the novel’s opening. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instinctively,
I think that Emerence, were she looking down from heaven, would think little of
the book. Magda needed to write the novel, but I don’t think Emerence needed to
read it. What Emerence needed was Magda. What Emerence needed, maybe, was an
apology. Magda didn’t apologize in life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet the
book itself can be viewed as a long-winded apology, and Emerence does care
about those (“Have you come to apologize?” she asks, when Magda shows up at her
door to ask her to come back after they’ve had a fight and Emerence has quit. Magda
doesn’t apologize, but they do make up.) If we’re going to imagine that
Emerence can hear Eva Grossman speaking to her at her grave, maybe we can also
imagine that Emerence somehow learns of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Door</i>. The question is, when Emerence hears the apology in Szabó’s book,
does the sun come out?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s better
to do the right thing in the first place than to make a mistake and then write
about it. Yet mistakes can’t always be helped, and for writers, words are also
actions. I do believe that statements and apologies and books are better than
nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
I also think Emerence would approve of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Door</i>’s autobiographical nature. When Magda takes Emerence to a set where
one of her books is being adapted for film, she’s upset that the film is
creating the illusion of branches moving as a way of symbolizing a character’s
passionate feelings. Later, Magda writes of Emerence, “She also demanded of me
that, in my art, it should be real passion and not machinery that moved the
branches. That was a major gift, the greatest of her bequests.” I think this
comment, along with the fact that the pet name of the narrator (who, in the
book, is otherwise unnamed) is “Magdushka,” hints to the reader that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i> is autobiographical. In this
interpretation, Magda Szabó, writer, learned the artistic lesson that Emerence
wished to impart, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i> is
what came out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Emerence
felt the film was dishonest because it made the viewer think the branches on
set were swirling when they weren’t. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Door</i> is not that kind of book. It’s a novel about a complex and heart-rending
relationship based, it seems, on a complex and heart-rending relationship that
actually existed. Had a camera been there in Budapest recording Magda Szabó and
Emerence Szeredás, it would have seen that door open in the moment when Magda
betrays Emerence, just as it does in the novel. It’s the best Szabó can do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So yes, I
think that in an imagined scenario in which the dead watch over the living and
send signs, Emerence does forgive Magda, eventually. I think she smiles
slightly and allows that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door </i>is
not bad, for a book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-19038322216799371472019-03-03T19:51:00.000-05:002019-03-03T20:16:35.996-05:00"Toward My Own Definition of Disability" published at Hazlitt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-87ok2fotu24/XHxzGPWEmrI/AAAAAAAAA04/vRkpOU0u7qwfoAy8NGrPHaDD6qjzi_ZhQCEwYBhgL/s1600/DisabilityEssayPhoto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="554" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-87ok2fotu24/XHxzGPWEmrI/AAAAAAAAA04/vRkpOU0u7qwfoAy8NGrPHaDD6qjzi_ZhQCEwYBhgL/s320/DisabilityEssayPhoto.png" width="256" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Last Thursday, February 28, 2019, Hazlitt published an essay of mine, “<a href="https://hazlitt.net/longreads/toward-my-own-definition-disability">Toward My Own Definition of Disability</a>.” Here’s how it happened.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></b></span>
<b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I had the idea for this essay when I was putting together a proposal for an essay collection to send to the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize contest early in 2018. I realized that there was a good chance any collection of my personal essays would be classified as being about or at least relating to disability. Yet at that time, I wasn't sure if I considered myself to have a disability. I decided to address the question in an essay.</span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Meanwhile, I was also trying to publish a different essay, “Pollyanna Problems.” I submitted the piece to Hazlitt, and they didn’t take it, but they liked my writing and expressed interest in working with me on something new, should I ever wish to pitch them. Little did they know that I had a whole list of essay ideas from the book proposal, which I promptly sent along. The disability essay was the strongest idea. It was actually when I was in the hospital last April, 2018, and most definitely in a disabled state, that I found out I’d gotten the assignment.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>So in May, 2018, after I'd gotten out of the hospital and was recuperating at my parents' house in the Kentucky countryside, I interviewed people, did research, and worked on my draft pretty much full-time. I felt justified in that, since the pay was decent. Could this be my new life as an essayist? I didn't have delusions that it would be, but it was still fun to think about. Toward the end of June, I submitted my first draft, and from then till last week, my editor and I were working to improve the piece. A fact-checker went over it and an artist, Chloe Cushman, gave it a fitting illustration. Approximately a year after that Crenshaw seed germinated in my head, the resulting essay was published. I guess it was a fruitful effort!</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>I’m grateful for everyone who has read, complimented, and shared the essay. Thank you!</b></span><br />
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Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-84409480271273085322018-02-23T12:20:00.001-05:002018-02-23T12:26:44.888-05:00"Pollyanna Problems" published at Vol. 1 Brooklyn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O4lfB-KOrRU/WpBKwCC-G3I/AAAAAAAAAzo/CO0HFDdX7jEKBVX_8VEXvWD3G6WZldNQQCLcBGAs/s1600/LittleLocksmithPhoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1072" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O4lfB-KOrRU/WpBKwCC-G3I/AAAAAAAAAzo/CO0HFDdX7jEKBVX_8VEXvWD3G6WZldNQQCLcBGAs/s320/LittleLocksmithPhoto.jpg" width="238" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;">I'm thrilled to announce that Vol. 1 Brooklyn has published my essay "<a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2018/02/21/pollyanna-problems-on-katharine-butler-hathaways-the-little-locksmith-and-the-pitfalls-of-excessive-optimism/" target="_blank">Pollyanna Problems: On Katharine Butler Hathaway's </a></span><i style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2018/02/21/pollyanna-problems-on-katharine-butler-hathaways-the-little-locksmith-and-the-pitfalls-of-excessive-optimism/" target="_blank">The Little Locksmith </a></i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2018/02/21/pollyanna-problems-on-katharine-butler-hathaways-the-little-locksmith-and-the-pitfalls-of-excessive-optimism/" target="_blank">and the Pitfalls of Excessive Optimism</a>."</span></div>
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My mother gave me <i>The Little Locksmith</i> for Christmas, 2016. She had heard of it through an essay that her book group had read and thought I might like it. I did, very much. Once I started writing about Hathaway's memoir, I decided I needed to read from her letters and journals, too. Goodness, it's amazing how many of her thoughts make me think <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">"yes! Kindred spirit! That's just what it's like. How amazing that you knew in the 40s what I just noticed last year!" Mom made a good match.</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zGPf3y_eZSQ/WpBJjM9rLQI/AAAAAAAAAzc/gll9BKh3Aj8unugjYxdEi96yDAGxOwfkACLcBGAs/s1600/LittleLocksmith_Inscription.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zGPf3y_eZSQ/WpBJjM9rLQI/AAAAAAAAAzc/gll9BKh3Aj8unugjYxdEi96yDAGxOwfkACLcBGAs/s320/LittleLocksmith_Inscription.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.12px;">I wrote the essay without limits of any kind, and the first draft, from this past July, was very long--like 10,000 words. My mother loved it and couldn't put it down. But editors were less interested. It took four different literary websites, at least three significantly revised drafts, and approximately seven months--starting the clock after I had written the piece--before "Pollyanna Problems" found its home. All this goes to show that writing and publishing essays is difficult! But once I had cut the piece to 4,000 words, I wasn't going back. I would keep trying until that essay got published. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.12px;">Every once in a while, revising, I would find a typo or that I had spelled "Katharine" as "Katherine" or gotten a date wrong. This humbled, consoled, and frustrated me. "Thank goodness the essay wasn't published right away, since if it had been, the world would have seen my mistakes!" That's a Pollyanna-ism right there, but it's also a warning against feelings of entitlement, a reminder to spend more time polishing one's work and less time complaining, silently or aloud, that people don't see its brilliance.</span></div>
Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-10953070099549673142017-11-11T11:59:00.000-05:002017-11-11T14:49:49.658-05:00"Silence Turned to Music" published at Joyland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8V7frW0L5PE/WgclThbdrhI/AAAAAAAAAzI/Jkx5YclzlK8PhaXaUBpSWRUcAv-58iqfACLcBGAs/s1600/SilenceTurnedToMusicPhoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="1320" height="160" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8V7frW0L5PE/WgclThbdrhI/AAAAAAAAAzI/Jkx5YclzlK8PhaXaUBpSWRUcAv-58iqfACLcBGAs/s320/SilenceTurnedToMusicPhoto.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Joyland magazine has published my story, "<a href="http://www.joylandmagazine.com/regions/new-york/silence-turned-music" target="_blank">Silence Turned to Music</a>"!<br />
<br />
This is a piece I began writing in the summer of 2012, inspired by Bach's Chaconne from the Partita in D minor for solo violin. I had begun writing about the Chaconne as nonfiction long before that, however. I'd written an essay about the Chaconne for my blog, <i>The Bach Season</i>, which even my mom--my number one fan--found difficult to read.<br />
<br />
This fictional take two was more successful, and it incorporated a lot of ideas I had wanted to express in writing. On my birthday (August 10), I learned that Joyland co-founder Emily Schultz wanted to publish the piece, and on October 26, it happened. I have received many nice comments about the story, especially from musicians.<br />
<br />
When you read the story, I recommend listening to the Chaconne at the same time. Below is a recording of it by violinist Hilary Hahn.<br />
<br />
Fun facts: After my last violin recital in Maine, before moving to Kentucky, my teacher, Arnold Liver, gave me a Hilary Hahn recording of solo Bach.<br />
<br />
During what I think was a subsequent summer, when I was at chamber-music camp in Vermont, we campers saw and heard Hilary Hahn perform a concert, including the Chaconne, at Middlebury College, where Hahn was participating in a French-immersion program. One of the younger campers went up to her and said hello in French. We had been warned that she couldn't speak English to us because of her program's rules. I did not say bonjour, but I did think it was awesome to see Hilary Hahn. Was one of the pieces called "Le Crépuscule"? I remember being proud to know what that word meant.<br />
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So many great words for that time of day, dusk. But that's another story.<br />
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<br />Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-54607547882016254472017-06-26T16:36:00.002-04:002017-06-26T18:15:53.774-04:00"Temporary Steps" published at Vol. 1 Brooklyn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TSa5OjCooWc/WVFpxXC8N1I/AAAAAAAAAys/v5dCIavA5yoNkcpc7F69OwFngAru-nhsACLcBGAs/s1600/TemporaryStepsPhoto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="293" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TSa5OjCooWc/WVFpxXC8N1I/AAAAAAAAAys/v5dCIavA5yoNkcpc7F69OwFngAru-nhsACLcBGAs/s400/TemporaryStepsPhoto.png" width="170" /></a></div>
I've had a short story, "<a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2017/06/25/sunday-stories-temporary-steps/" target="_blank">Temporary Steps</a>," published by a bona fide literary outlet, Vol. 1 Brooklyn! This is a first! (Technically I have previously published another fiction piece, but not in an outlet that counts, in my opinion.) Many rejections, though not of this story, have preceded this acceptance!<br />
<br />
It's not necessarily the best story I've written so far, but I succeeded in biting off a piece the right size for the intended publication. I have a second story about the same family in the same house, so when it is published, they will be a pair. Thanks, John Updike (and biographer Adam Begley), for inspiring me to write by thinking about my life and memories and for teaching me that you don't have to put everything about a place or character into one story.Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-2165864868545243872017-03-31T17:37:00.001-04:002017-03-31T17:37:33.053-04:00"A Life Story" published at Entropy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3ae1jp_-U64/WN7L1tQh4yI/AAAAAAAAAyM/WJd3kd_QgWgEgtfw0eAp3DYXSwUvFtFqACLcB/s1600/BookshelfPhoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3ae1jp_-U64/WN7L1tQh4yI/AAAAAAAAAyM/WJd3kd_QgWgEgtfw0eAp3DYXSwUvFtFqACLcB/s320/BookshelfPhoto.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
On March 29th, Entropy published my essay, "<a href="https://entropymag.org/a-life-story/" target="_blank">A Life Story</a>," which looks at a recent health scare of mine through the lens of the idea so well expressed by Joan Didion that, as she wrote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." My new essay relates the frustrations of medical uncertainty to the idea that we expect life to proceed as a story and feel disappointed when our lives fail to provide climaxes and resolutions.Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-60129482180861886032017-03-09T14:36:00.003-05:002017-03-09T14:36:47.910-05:00"Für Bess" published at Catapult<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uddKb8josf4/WMGrRuENOKI/AAAAAAAAAxs/lqQGG_ZTyssniHac7gqER9VkPX8S7O6ZwCLcB/s1600/SeelyRoadScreenshot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uddKb8josf4/WMGrRuENOKI/AAAAAAAAAxs/lqQGG_ZTyssniHac7gqER9VkPX8S7O6ZwCLcB/s320/SeelyRoadScreenshot.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seely Road as seen from above, via Google Earth.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: left;">On March 6th, 2017, Catapult published my essay, "</span><a href="https://catapult.co/stories/fur-bess-on-neighbors-music-parties-and-growing-up" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">Für Bess: On Neighbors, Music Parties, and Growing Up</a><span style="text-align: left;">," a reflection on the street where I grew up and on how one of my neighbors there, an amateur pianist named <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2008/09/25/obituaries/rebecca-b-kaliss/" target="_blank">Bess Kaliss</a>, brought the neighborhood together through her "music parties."</span></div>
Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-20755236599042310452016-12-27T16:18:00.001-05:002016-12-27T16:19:34.202-05:00Best of 2016Hi everyone,<br />
<br />
Once again, I'm posting a few links to essays I've published this year in order to keep "Crenshaw Seeds" going. I wish you all a safe and happy 2016.<br />
<br />
1) Entropy Magazine: "<a href="http://entropymag.org/after-the-essay/" target="_blank">After the Essay</a>"<br />
<br />
2) Entropy Magazine: "<a href="http://entropymag.org/looking-for-america-with-simon-garfunkel/" target="_blank">Looking For America with Simon & Garfunkel</a>"<br />
<br />
3) Catapult (community site): "<a href="https://catapult.co/community/stories/the-unknowable" target="_blank">The Unknowable: Writers On Death</a>" This essay includes my thoughts on Jenny Diski's column in the <i>London Review of Books</i> about dying of lung cancer (and about her relationship with novelist Doris Lessing). Since the essay was published, two relevant things happened. First, Jenny Diski died. Second, her <i>LRB</i> essays on dying were collected and published as <i>In Gratitude</i>, one of <i>The New York Times'</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2016.html?_r=0" target="_blank">100 Notable Books</a> this year. Despite having thought much about death, I still don't know what to say about it. I admired Jenny Diski's writing. I'm glad that her book was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/books/review/jenny-diskis-in-gratitude.html" target="_blank">well received</a>. I'm sorry she had to die, and that we all do.<br />
<br />
If it seems that I wrote few essays this year, that's in part because I was working on finishing my first novel, which I am now sending out to agents and publishers.<br />
<br />
As for reading: I read Katie Roiphe's <i>The Violet Hour</i> which, given my own thoughts and writing on death, was exactly what I wanted to read. Then, inspired by Roiphe's book, which described John Updike's death and the way he treated death in his writing--the book also did the same for several other writers--I read Updike's Rabbit novels, right up through the novella, "Rabbit Remembered," which continues the story beyond Rabbit's death. That novella particularly interested me because in writing my "death essay," I had imagined that one of the ways a work of fiction could treat a mortal protagonist's inevitable death was to continue the story beyond it. And that, as I learned in <i>The Violet Hour</i>, was exactly what "Rabbit Remembered" did. I have enjoyed both the experience of reading the Rabbit books and, now, the feeling of having them in my head. I am also glad to have read books that I know my dad likes and to be able to share that appreciation with him.<br />
<br />
Take care in 2017, everyone!<br />
<br />
Yours,<br />
"Katie Crenshaw"/Ashley P. TaylorAshley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-19436758184883673932016-01-05T11:48:00.001-05:002016-01-05T17:00:25.822-05:00Best of 2015Hello, everyone. Happy 2016! As evidenced by the fact that I have not posted on Crenshaw Seeds since January 2015, I have been ignoring this blog. The reason for this neglect is that is that I have been focusing on having my work published by other outlets, preferably those that pay and have helpful editors. I worked with many such editors last year and am grateful to all of them. Here are links to the 2015 stories of which I am most proud along with some notes on each.<br />
<br />
1. "<a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/04/books/peter-pan-the-ultimate-alt-bro" target="_blank">Peter Pan: the Ultimate Alt-Bro</a>," <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i>, April<br />
This essay, comparing forever-young Peter Pan to "alt-bros" (young men who live in the imagined future and, in the present, refuse to commit), may have seemed out-of-the-blue when it was published in April; however, the idea came to mind soon after Allison Williams starred in <i>Peter Pan Live!</i> on NBC, in December, 2014. The characters in Lena Dunham's <i>Girls</i>, in which Williams played the neurotic-yet-floundering Marnie, are also like "alt-bros" in their struggle and sometimes refusal to grow up, and so I thought it ironic that Williams went straight from <i>Girls</i> to <i>Peter Pan, </i>the boy who <i>never</i> grows up.<br />
2. "<a href="http://luminajournal.com/lumina-online-literary-journal/public-art/" target="_blank">Public Art</a>," LUMINA Online Journal, May<br />
I started writing this essay, about how others see us in ways that we can't see ourselves, in the summer of 2012, and it was a long, rejection- and doubt-filled haul to publication almost three years later. Through "Public Art," I received to my first letter of acceptance from Submittable, the software that literary journals use to process submissions, so it was a milestone in my writing career. It was also a personal milestone, since in writing it, I did some very important reflection about how being born with a medical condition has affected my life. In publishing it, I made the decision to no longer hide, or leave unacknowledged, my health issues.<br />
3. "<a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2015/08/26/middles/" target="_blank">Middles</a>," Vol. 1 Brooklyn, August<br />
I workshopped this piece about how my attitude toward mortality has changed throughout my life in a Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in fall of 2013. Like "Public Art," it faced many rejections, despite my conviction that it was as good if not better than other pieces I'd written. Persistence paid off in this case.<br />
4. "<a href="https://www.braindecoder.com/crying-an-exploration-essay-1488193407.html" target="_blank">Crying: An Exploration</a>," Brain Decoder, December<br />
In which I gave myself an assignment to write a longform essay on a topic of interest, vague unease, and curiosity. I am grateful to Brain Decoder for accepting my pitch for this essay so that I could focus on it as a bona fide assignment, rather than writing it on the side.<br />
5. "<a href="https://catapult.co/stories/rabbit-hole" target="_blank">Down the Rabbit Hole</a>," Catapult, December<br />
I decided to write this piece, in which I reflect on my various and notably unliterary associations with <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, during what was called "Alice in Wonderland week" in NYC (one filled with Alice-themed events in honor of the book's 150th anniversary) hoping that the news hook might lead to publication. I ended up self-publishing it with Catapult, which has both a self-publishing platform, Catapult Community, and a curated site that is professionally edited and produced. I had read that Catapult sometimes selected pieces from the community site to feature on the editorial one, but since this did not happen right away, I decided that my piece had not made the cut. Lo and behold, an editor contacted me some time later--the news hook long gone!--and asked to feature the piece on the editorial site, where it lives to this day. I had a great experience working with the Catapult editors and was thrilled that my whim to take time away from paid journalism to write a short personal essay turned into a publication.<br />
6. "<a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/12/books/seeking-grace" target="_blank">Seeking Grace</a>," <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i>, December<br />
Though I didn't think that Sarah L. Kaufman's <i>The Art of Grace</i> was a <i>great</i> book, I was not sorry that I read it. It was stimulating, and I enjoyed reviewing it.Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-3530853560216779882015-01-15T14:31:00.000-05:002015-01-15T16:52:09.876-05:00Opposing Forces<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; tab-stops: 126.85pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">Sarah Gerard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">Binary
Star</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; tab-stops: 126.85pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"><a href="http://twodollarradio.com/Books/BookDetails.aspx?ViewProduct=1&ProductID=220&StrFrom=~/Books/Default.aspx">Two
Dollar Radio</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; tab-stops: 126.85pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">January 2015<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; tab-stops: 126.85pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">Binary </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">Star</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;"> is a giant, multi-level metaphor
between</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> two young
people in</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;"> a long-distance relationship and</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">stars of a</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> binary </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">system, a pair of stars that orbit their
common center of mass. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">The </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">story's narrator,
an anorexic astronomy student, is compared with a star that has burned nearly
all of its fuel and is starting to destroy its core. In the star’s final state,
it becomes what is called white dwarf. A white dwarf cannot exceed a certain
mass without exploding. The narrator cannot eat without throwing up. Her
boyfriend, John, is an alcoholic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">The novel radiates starry symbolism and connected
opposites in ripples large and small. Concentric circles. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6TF7Wv61npY/VLgOKlyfXYI/AAAAAAAAAr8/eliTk3AFaD8/s1600/BINARYSTAR-217x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6TF7Wv61npY/VLgOKlyfXYI/AAAAAAAAAr8/eliTk3AFaD8/s1600/BINARYSTAR-217x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">The </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">couple takes a road trip around</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">perimeter of</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">U.S., an orbit.
They also spend time together in their respective cities, New York and Chicago.
When apart, they talk constantly on</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">phone, a long-distance connection emblematic
of stars’ gravitational tethering. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">They talk. But they don’t really listen.
They worry about each other to avoid worrying about themselves. The mutual
concern connects them, but it’s also a way in which they fail to connect, to
communicate. The failed attempt at connecting is the force that keeps them
together and keeps them spinning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">When one body orbits another, the
direction of the force acting on the body is always toward the other object but
the direction of travel at any given moment is straight ahead. This combination
of falling toward the center and of moving straight ahead produces an orbit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">John and I
follow our paths into the center but we never reach the center. We are objects
drawn to each other in space. We are space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">We fall
together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">A connection manifests itself in a
failure to connect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">The novel’s </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">astronomical symbolism extends from</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">book's framework
to its details. The narrator wears Converse sneakers, which have a star logo.
Beer is Corona and Space Barley. Packs of gum Orbit. Candy bars are from Mars. Cigarettes
are Ultra Light. Of course the characters eat donuts, rings of matter surrounding emptiness. The narrator gets a job at Starbucks.
And she reads magazine after magazine about the country’s cultural stars. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">“What is a perfect star?” the narrator
asks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">A white one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">They’re all
white.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">No. Some are
blue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">And some are
red.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">Stars are red white and blue, and so are
the colors of the book. A red futon. Red Bull. Red Solo cups. The road trip
circles the U.S., its flag red, white, blue, and star-spangled. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">In New Orleans, they visit a strip club,
where a dancer from Russia circles a star-shaped pole. The polestar. “Her skin
is shining. She’s radiant. Sexy.” In analogy, the narrator wants to strip
herself to her core. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvrpUGB5OcE/VLgOqE266vI/AAAAAAAAAsE/RTU_kBWyCcs/s1600/ConversePhoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvrpUGB5OcE/VLgOqE266vI/AAAAAAAAAsE/RTU_kBWyCcs/s1600/ConversePhoto.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">The narrator’s boyfriend John wants to
start a veganarchistic “revolution” to promote animal rights, and the couple
begins to do so, though in a mostly superficial way, through Facebook images. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">John
wants to be “primitive.” He thinks about living in a tree. He wants to be
radical. Etymologically, radical means going back to the root, or effecting change from the root, from Latin
word for root,</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">radix.</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">As
usual, the narrator seems to be John’s opposite. She can’t live in a tree. She
can’t be far from a drugstore where she gets her diet pills, energy drinks, and</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">Star</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">magazines.
She’s materialistic.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span> </div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">But their supposed opposition connects them. She,
too, wants to get to her core, the point from which she radiates. She also
wants to destroy her excess material. She is becoming nothing but her root. </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">And he, like her, is materialistic. He drinks excessively. He has a
leather couch. He owns a dog named Dog.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">The characters contradict themselves and each
other. They are also alike.</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">Etymonline.com says that the Latin words
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">radius</i>, root of radiant, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">radix </i>may or may not be
fundamentally related. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-laGhsnJ72Q4/VLgO17rCHdI/AAAAAAAAAsM/TnRhJqDWXSo/s1600/Shoes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-laGhsnJ72Q4/VLgO17rCHdI/AAAAAAAAAsM/TnRhJqDWXSo/s1600/Shoes.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From Orbit gum to veganarchic revolutions, stellar symbolism permeates the novel. Many things represent stars. But what do stars represent? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Whether in magazines or in
the night sky, stars are universally recognized figures. Faraway, impersonal
figures. Objectified figures. To be objectified is to lose agency. To be
controlled. The "lives" of stars depend on physical forces; they are billiard balls bounced around by other billiard
balls. “The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its
fate.” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cultural stars are also stripped of agency in some ways. We as a society force expectations on them, and they are influenced by us. We expect them to dress up
and be on magazine covers and walk on red carpets because that's just what
stars do.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The narrator feels these
same pressures to be thin and radiant, beyond reproach. They push her around.
In this way, in feeling like a powerless object, the narrator identifies with
the animals that are farmed for food or fur or research, animals who have no
choices in their fates. She tries to tell this to her mom on the phone. “I read
books on animal liberation. I feel they’re about me. I feel it’s me,
Mom.” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If she can free the animals, maybe she can free herself, too?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">The </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">narrator is like a star in that she becomes an object, a number on
a scale, a figure in the mirror. She wants to be light. She is an object that
she wants to destroy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">Yet
she’s also a subject, a destroyer. She has split herself in two so that s</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">he, the subject, the mind, can rule herself, the object, the
body. “I cannot control what my body does, though at times I feel I can
control what I do to it, and thus what it becomes.” In one other sentence,
in particular, she seems distanced from herself: “In San Francisco, I become
viral in the upstairs bedroom of a Hostelling International and beg to be
hospitalized.” The passive voice highlights the flimsiness of her existence.
It’s as if she is observing herself from above.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">Stars
as symbols share the narrator’s paradox of character. Yes, they can be hapless
faraway figures, objects, but they also symbolize freedom and independence.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">In</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"> the </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">end of</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"> the </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">novel...</span></div>
</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;">the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">narrator breaks up with her boyfriend and also
breaks free of</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the binary </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">system in an
act of anarchy and, fitting for the stellar metaphor, arson. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">Yet she doesn't break free of herself
and her compulsions. I don't think</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times;"> the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt;">narrator will ever be free in the way she
wants to be because she is her own captor. In life, the body cannot be freed
from the mind. They continue to orbit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<i>Disclaimer: Sarah Gerard is a friend of mine, so I cannot be completely objective about her work. </i></div>
Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1494911761378788518.post-54322671975474379252014-12-14T22:07:00.000-05:002014-12-15T07:29:17.700-05:00Menagerie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Merry-go-round_in_George_Square_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1070307.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Merry-go-round_in_George_Square_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1070307.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stephen Sweeney, via <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merry-go-round_in_George_Square_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1070307.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>The</i> </span><i style="font-family: Arial;">New York Times</i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> is currently running a series of essays, under the
heading <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/menagerie/?_r=0">“Menagerie,”</a> about the relations between humans and animals. I’m
interested in the word “menagerie,” its relationships to other words, and what
those connections among words suggest about the liaisons between the creatures
themselves, ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The French word ‘ménagerie,’ a collection of wild and exotic
animals, comes from the word ‘ménage,’ meaning household. ‘Ménage’ can also
refer to a sexual relationship among the members of a household.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But words are related not only
by etymology but also by association. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">When I see ‘menagerie,’ I
think of ‘ménage,’ then ‘ménage à trois.’ And then, because I love French, I
begin to think about merry-go-round horses and Edith Piaf.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Tu me fais tour-rrrr-ner la
tête. Mon manège à moi, c’est toi.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is Piaf singing about a
lover as “my merry-go-round” in the 1958 song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akRLH3ibGdA">“Mon Manège À Moi.” </a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“You make my head spin. My merry-go-round, it’s you,”</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> the translation goes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">‘Manège’ means riding arena,
a ring where people ride horses round and round. It can also refer to the ring’s
amusement-park equivalent, the merry-go-round. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because menagerie refers to
animals, because merry-go-rounds often consist of horses (plastic or
metal though they may be), because ‘manège à moi, c’est toi’ sounds like ‘ménage à trois,’ I at
first thought that ménage and manège were the same word. In the song, Piaf—well,
actually lyricist Jean Constantin—equated the two. Her ménage, her
relationship, was her manège, her merry-go-round, her thrill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But no, they are different
words with different roots. ‘Manège’ comes from the Italian ‘mannegiare,’ to
handle. It’s based on the Latin word for hand, ‘manus,’ and the idea, I
suppose, of maneuvering horses in the ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But how does ménage relate
to menagerie? Consult <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Petit Robert</i>,
the very thick yet somehow abridged French dictionary, and you’ll find that ménage,
in its modern usage, has no animal association. Yet menagerie comes from this
root. Is a menagerie a household for animals? Or are
houses—and relationships—cages for people? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">It turns out that centuries
ago, the word ménagerie, at least in French, did have an animal connection: it referred to the running of both
household and farm. Along those lines, there is such a thing as a house-barn,
where farm animals live in the same building as their owners, conserving body
heat. A ménage can be a menagerie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">‘Ménage’ is derived from ‘mansio,’ a Latin word for house or
dwelling, and that from the Latin verb ‘maneo, manere,’ meaning to remain, stay.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thousands of years ago,
humans didn't remain anywhere for long; they moved with the beasts they hunted.
Dwellings were accordingly temporary. Why stay in any one place unless the
animals—and more generally, the food supply—do so, too? With fenced in animals and
crop cultivation came more permanent homes. The development of ménages and
menageries went hand in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thinking of nomadic cultures
brings to mind another vagrant, human-animal coexistence: the circus. A circus
is collection of people and animals unique and amazing. It involves captive
animals, yet it is not sedentary; it migrates, equipped with both cages
and tents. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Circus was the word Philip
Astley, <a href="http://www.circopedia.org/Philip_Astley">known as the father
of the modern circus</a>, used for a riding ring. Thus the circus began, literally,
as a manège, for trick riding, and later grew to include other acts, other
animals. A circus is both manège and menagerie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I once bought a t-shirt
showing two birds perched together in a birdcage with its door wide open. The
idea, the street vendor explained to me, was that the birds could fly away but
chose to stay together in their birdcage (birdhouse?).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">As I see it, the chief
difference between a ménage and a menagerie is that in a human
household, people choose to stay, while captive animals have no choice. There are grey areas in both domains, however. Humans who could quit their ménages at any time feel many
pressures to stick around. As for animals: though you might rightly call indoor pets “captive,” they don’t necessarily want to run away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The message of the Piaf song
is that the singer is so enthralled by her lover that she feels no need to
rove. </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">“Je ferais le tour du monde; ça ne tournerait pas plus que ça. La terre n’est
pas assez ronde pour m’étourdir autant que toi.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> (</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>“I could go around the world and that wouldn’t turn
more than this. The world isn’t round enough to stun, or dizzy, me as much as
you.”</i>) </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">A merry-go-round is, in
part, a way to experience the feeling of covering distance without going
anywhere, and the merry-go-round relationship is a stationary thrill. The motion of the manège, however metaphorical,
enables the stability of the ménage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">When the cage door is open,
my fancy flies pretty far and returns with diverse ideas for me to assemble. I
want them all in my menagerie. They make my head spin.</span></div>
</div>
Ashley P. Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01950375262165225615noreply@blogger.com0