The First Rule

If I were spending quality time with a woman not my wife, I might refer to her as a special friend. The woman who is my wife would call her a slut. Same lucky lady, two different perspectives.

Words matter. More importantly, our choice of words conveys how we feel and can frame an issue for further discussion. We might avail ourselves of certain phrases to elicit a specific response from an audience. Words can have multiple meanings, or meanings can change over time.

According to Rabbi Lenny Bruce, the many slurs that get tossed around are meaningless sounds. As my good friend Chat paraphrased, these “only gain power through the emotional reactions we collectively decide to attach to them… his core idea: make them banal by ubiquitous, casual usage—then they lose their sting.” It’s a nice thought, but I don’t think the world is ready. If you doubt that, call your wife an emasculating bitch, and see how that goes.

The words we use can clue in careful listeners to our positions on various hot button issues. Before I go into those, I’d like to draw a distinction between using a word and referring to a word. For example, I used to say “shicksa” when talking about a gentile female, and I should have had my tongue cut out when I did. It’s derived from the Hebrew word for abomination and is used by the Torah to describe insects which Jews should not eat. Think of centipedes, caterpillars, and slugs. Evidently, certain varieties of grasshoppers are okay.

This may be presumptuous, but since I merely referred to the word “shicksa” without using it as an epithet, no one should take offense.

I could say some similar about the word “schvartze”, including the part about having my tongue cut out, but it’s not quite the same thing. If you say it in English, it’s certainly a slur. But if you’re fluent in Yiddish and speaking in the beloved mamaloshen, it’s not so clear. When the American press still used the word “Negro”, the Forverts and other Yiddish periodicals went with “Negger”. Yes, it sounds suspiciously like the N-word, but it really does correspond to Negro. When newspaper style guides replaced “Negro” with “Black”, “Negger” was replaced with “Schvartze” which, oddly enough, means “Black”.

Before I proceed, a quick shout-out to the late Thurgood Marshall. When the term “African American” was introduced in the early eighties, Justice Marshall issued a press release saying that he would use it in his opinions from then on. He added that he spent his entire career trying to get people to spell “Negro” with a capital N, but by the time he succeeded, they started spelling “black” with a lower-case b. Sometimes, it’s best to float downstream.

Having drawn this distinction of referring to words as opposed to using them, I’m going to refer to a bunch of words and phrases without actually using them. As I do, imagine what you’d assume about the attitudes of a person saying these things.

Faggot. Malformed Woman. Tranny. Genital Mutilation. Gender Affirming. Single Mother. Welfare Queen. Illegal Alien. Undocumented Person. Me Too. False Accusation. Lady Of The Night. Survival Sex. White Lives Matter. Redlining. Toxic Masculinity, Feminazi. Anticolonialism. Dirty Jew. Zionist.

And many more. Which brings us to the first rule of politics: if you name it, you own it.

Of course, there are other contenders for the title of “first rule”, but this is the one I prefer. Thanks for paying attention.

Federal law has provisions for family reunification, and that seems nice. But call it chain migration and suddenly you have something very different. Either way, it’s how Melania got her parents into the country.

What about ending late term pregnancy? This is usually due to risk of the mother’s death or fetal abnormalities inconsistent with life. The safest thing for the woman is a procedure doctors refer to as intact dilation. The forces of darkness renamed it partial birth abortion, and now it’s illegal.

It might only be necessary to change the order of the words. Consider any issue in the culture wars. Do you want politicians who stand for family values? Or are you more like me and prefer folks who value families?

Sometimes there’s a push to adjust language. When I was in college, the girls around me insisted on being referred to as women. Now, decades later, the ladies in my life like being called girls. This is, after all, a youth-obsessed culture.

Men are always Misters. But how about the gals? If she’s married, then it’s Missus. Without a ring on her finger, it’s plain old Miss. That’s how the appellation Ms was born, although it was more of a stillbirth. Outside of mailing labels and televised congressional hearings, it just didn’t catch on. Perhaps that’s because we’re so informal nowadays and all on a first-name basis. For whatever reason, I’ve met very few women who insist on Ms.

Nonetheless, change can be forced if your heart is in the right place. For example, wokeness used to be a wonderful thing. That meant that you were enlightened, aware, ready to see things in different ways, and maybe even compassionate. Now, Tucker Carlson denigrates anything he doesn’t like as woke. And we all crave his approval.

Some folks don’t get the point of using they/them for individuals identifying as nonbinary. I understand that, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think it will catch on. As anyone who attended our shul’s recent pride panel knows, “they” and “them” have always been used as a singular, albeit not quite as obviously. But we shouldn’t stop there. Languages like French and Yiddish have two forms of the second case – one that’s singular and familiar, the other being plural and formal. Think of it as the “Royal You.”

English used to have this as well. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here’s a direct quote from one of Shakespeare lesser-known comedies:

“Juliet, Juliet! Wherefore art thou Juliet? Deny thy mother and refuse thy name. Whilst thou are at it, to thine own self be true. And get thee to a nunnery, thou slut!”

There is indeed precedent for a plural pronoun to stop being so full of itself and become singular.

I would never intentionally misgender a person. But since I’m not so good with names, I’m worried that pronouns are going to be a challenge for me. I’m thinking of ditching “he”, “she”, and “they” entirely and just going with “this one” and “that one”. If that upsets anyone, at least I’ll be an equal opportunity offender.

We should cut some slack for folks who have trouble adjusting. Still, it is important to keep up with the times. A friend who was a bit older than me used to refer to “Red China”, which sounds a bit discordant now. If I asked him about it, he’d just say that’s what it was always called. Now, he was not a Jew, so it couldn’t be some sort of kosher China policy. Maybe he was still waiting for us to unleash Chiang Kai-shek? Whatever. Just plain lame.

And another pet peeve of mine: Jews say, “Shield of David”, not “Star of David”. And it’s the “Western Wall”, not the “Wailing Wall”.

Words can take on a different spin, depending on how you say them. Once again, I’ll go back to the Talmud of my youth: David Berg’s “My Friend G-d”. East European Jews were quite a superstitious lot, always worrying about dybbuks, demons, and other nasty creatures of the underworld. Suppose you came across a newborn baby. You surely wouldn’t tell the mother how beautiful the kid is because that would tempt the evil eye. Pui! Pui! Pui! Rather, you’d say something like “Oy! What an ugly child!” Unless, of course, it really is an ugly baby. In which case you’d say “OY! WHAT AN UGLY CHILD!”

Back in the early eighties, a Reform synagogue in Israel was celebrating Simchat Torah. Now, get your fainting couches and smelling salts ready. They were dancing around with the Torahs, men and women together. I kid you not! Several Orthodox men came in with big smiles and asked to join. The congregation was pleasantly surprised and welcomed their guests. At which point, these Yids grabbed the scrolls and started to run away with them. A scuffle ensued, police were called, and arrests were made. It is against Israeli law to disrupt a worship service, which is as it should be.

This incident even made the headlines in the good old U S of A! There was a resolution of sorts. The various rabbis put out a statement that sort of, kind of, condemned the Torah thieves. It didn’t quite go as far as saying that all Jewish expression was welcome in Israel, because of course it didn’t. But this did not happen again, so fine.

I discussed this with an Orthodox friend, and not too surprisingly, there was no meeting of the minds. We both insisted that since this was in Israel, it had to mean something! Of course, we didn’t agree on what that should be. For her, it was a matter of doing things in the correct way. For me, Jews should be allowed to practice their religion as they see fit.

This is part of the conflict between Israel’s traditional religious communities and Israel’s less traditional religious communities. A lot of it comes down to which word is preferred: unity or pluralism. Of course, both have value. Unity, next to pluralism, most dear. Sure, that reference might be a little obscure, and it does seem to put me on the same side as John C. Calhoun and slavery. But it sure does the trick.

Our Men’s Club is applying for the Federation’s Quality Club Award. One of the items on the rather lengthy questionnaire was to list what we were doing to make the LGBT+ community feel welcome and at home. I’m delighted the Federation is pushing this and hope we’re doing enough.

Not that long ago, decent folks could barely say the word homosexual. Pui! Pui! Pui! At best, those people were likely to be described as having predilections, or worse, proclivities. Happily, this embattled community has learned about the importance of language – after all, silence equals death. At first, I thought it was neat that the word “queer” had been repurposed, since it used to be an unpleasant epitaph for, you know, those people. However, I’ve been given to understand there is discomfort with this word, and I’m not sure if it belongs in my own lexicon.

The phrase “sexual preference” came into use a few decades back, and it’s certainly better than “sexual perversion”. This was replaced by “sexual orientation”, which suggests immutability and is more likely to be covered by laws against discrimination. Of course, the family values crowd coopted “sexual preference”, implying something less than immutability. I don’t know where the vocabulary goes next, but with G-d’s help, our grandchildren won’t understand what this tsuris was about.

A few years ago, I took a course with Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, the Executive Vice President and Academic Dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Yonkers. In the conclusion of her book, “Esau’s Blessing: How the Bible Embraces Those with Special Needs”, she writes that “our tradition calls upon us to understand that all people, at every level of ability, deserve understanding and compassion”. Although Dr. Prouser does not focus on words per se, these can get in the way of the understanding and compassion she’s calling for.

In 1910, Henry Goddard,  a member of the eugenics movement, developed definitions for “idiot”, “imbecile”, and “moron” describing various degrees of “feeblemindedness”.  In the 1940s, these were replaced by the phrase “mental retardation”, which was thought to be less insulting. That is, until the R-word became popular. Now, we’re more likely to hear about “special needs” or “intellectual disabilities”, although Elon Musk is doing his best to bring back the R-word.

For what it’s worth, I occasionally suspect that some of my more endearing quirks are due to my being somewhere on the spectrum. It’s not all that important, but it would give me another reason to think about myself. A neurodivergent friend had ChatGPT read one of my posts, and Chat concluded that I am in fact cognitively diverse. However, my neurotypical son did the same thing and got the opposite answer. Go figure. I’ll leave you to speculate what the woman who is my wife thinks of me.

And speaking of me, there’s one thing you need to know about: I am a momma’s boy. Now, maybe all Jewish men are momma’s boys, but I take it to a bit of an extreme. I am the mommiest momma’s boy you’ll ever meet. Let’s see where that takes us.

One of our most important commandments is to honor our mothers. Sure, it mentions fathers, but nobody really cares about fathers. Which leads to a question. If my mother, she should rest in peace, wants me to do something, but the Almighty wants me to do something else, where does that leave me? That’s a no-brainer, and we don’t even need to apply Rabbi Ishmael’s rules of textual interpretation. To the best of my knowledge, my mother and the Almighty have never disagreed. But what if they ever did? Well, I’d certainly give KBH a chance to make His case.

My mother taught me my first bit of Mishnah. It listed the three reasons why a woman dies in childbirth: not lighting Shabbat candles, not separating challah properly, and not going to the mikvah. My mother, who had three miscarriages before my older brother was born, really hated this one.

I asked an Orthodox acquaintance about this, and he explained that it was necessary to look at the Hebrew word used for dying. It might not actually mean, you know, dying, but might refer to the woman’s failure to bring up a proper Jewish child. Again, so much fuss over one word. When I told my mother about this, she was quite unimpressed. Indeed, she got a bit nasty.

So, if you’re wondering where I get my attitude, I don’t know either.

A friend from Hong Kong told me two jokes. The first has nothing to do with the first rule of politics, but it’s worth repeating. But before I do, a quick trigger warning: it’s not politically correct, and some of you snowflakes might want to wait outside while I tell it.

Suppose you’re drinking tea. You peek into the cup and, great googly moogly, there’s a fly floating around in your beverage. What do you do?

If you’re American, you toss it all out and grab a new cup. You know, wasteful.

If you’re British, you carefully scoop out the bug, reheat the water to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it’s sterile and you can proceed to drink. Very efficient, very proper.

If you’re Chinese, well, the fly is just another source of protein. Down the hatch!

And if you’re Jewish? You know how frugal those guys can be. Grab the fly, wring out every drop back into the tea, and you’re good to go.

The second joke is not as funny, but it’s right on point.

What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.

What if they speak two languages? Bilingual.

And how about a person who speaks only one language? American!

As an American, I am very much dependent on translations for anything biblical. This opens the door for boatloads of variations, but these are not necessarily manipulative or nefarious. Some translations are the work of great big committees, which means a whole lot of folks can weigh in on each word. Other translations are mostly solo efforts and are influenced by individual interests and training.

For example, Professor Gary Rendsburg is uniquely disinterested in Mishnah, Midrash, and Rabbinics. His focus is on how a text would have been understood by someone listening thousands of years ago. He’ll weave through ancient linguistics, pronunciations, loan words, and explain how a story originated in this or that valley at a specific date.  His conclusions are quite plausible, although frequently different from anything I’ve heard in shul. But I digress.

It’s a man’s world. Sure is! And why is that? It says it right there in Genesis 2:18. Woman was created as “ezer ke-negdo”, a fitting helper for man. Which is why they promise to: love, honor, and obey; graciously submit to their husbands; keep silent in church (or shul); serve in purity; speak not unless spoken to; ask not “why” but “when”, not “how” but “how high”; wash and mend our dirty socks, graciously.

Except, maybe not. In one class, Professor Rendsburg clarified that Eve was a “Lady Counterpart”, which is not subordinate at all. He went into more detail in an article entitled “Woman: Helpmate No Longer”. It’s a deep dive with all sorts of  terms like pharyngeal fricative, Ugaritic cognates, and compound prepositions. Oddly, the phrase “Lady Counterpart” does not appear in the article. When I asked him about it in an email, he didn’t recall saying that, but he liked it! Maybe I’ll get a footnote.

It's obvious how the choice of words can impact a translation, but let’s not stop there. A comma here and an ellipsis there can change things altogether. Here’s Isaiah 40:3, as per the Revised Geneva Translation:

A voice cries in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the L-rd! Make straight a path for our G-d in the desert!”

For Christians, this alludes to John the Baptist, who is out in the boondocks dunking sinners into the brackish water of the Jordan. Compare this to the Jewish Publication Society:

A voice rings out: “Clear in the desert a road for the L-rd! Level in the wilderness a highway for our G-d!”

Jews see it as directions out of Captivity and back to the Promised Land. See what a little punctuation can do?

There’s a group within Evangelical Christianity that calls itself “Red Letter Christians”. According to Wikipedia, they focus on “the fight against poverty, the defense of peace, building strong families, respecting human rights and welcoming foreigners”. You know, the kind of Christian I like.

These folks get their name from the red letters in Christian scriptures that are ostensibly direct quotes from the guy Professor Amy Jill Levine calls the “Misunderstood Jew”. For what it’s worth, the Synoptics are derived from an even earlier source, and these quotes may well be accurate.

Which brings us to Isaiah 7:14. A Christian friend, no doubt trying to win me over, showed me his bible  and this verse was in bright red letters. Here’s the Revised Geneva Translation:

Therefore the L-rd Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And she shall call His Name, “Immanuel”.

Wow! Were the rabbis lying to me all along? Should I be looking for a baptismal font? Maybe, and maybe not. As per the Jewish Publication Society:

Assuredly, my L-rd will give you a sign of His own accord! Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.

So which is it, less filling or great taste? I mean, virgin or young woman? So much riding on one word! The original Hebrew has עַלמָה (almah), which Google translates as maiden, damsel, young woman, maid, or lass, but not virgin. Ask Google to translate virgin into Hebrew, and you get בְּתוּלָה (betulah). I mean, can’t the Tanach get its act together and let us know if a girl is pure or not? Well, sure it can! Just look at Genesis 19:8. Both the Revised Geneva Translation and the Jewish Publication Society quote Lot as saying “Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man”. So, good on the girls for keeping their knees locked. Not so good on being offered up for gang rape.

Does this settle the great Isaiah 7:14 controversy? Hardly! I’ll address this sometime in the future, so watch this space!

Terminology runs rampant through any discussion of the Middle East. By itself, there is nothing wrong with the word “Palestine”. If I understand correctly, it comes from “Philistine”. The Jerusalem Post was originally the Palestine Post. Similarly, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra used to be the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. Before 1948, the Jews in the Yishuv were listed as Palestinians on British passports.

Of course, things have changed a bit. Now it’s customary to shout “Free Palestine!” before shooting up a synagogue anywhere in the Diaspora.

After the Six Day War, which many Arabs refer to as the al-Naksa, or setback, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242. As per Brittanica.com, Arab states should accept Israel’s right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” In return, Israel was called on to withdraw from “territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Presumably, this was the basis for the much heralded “land for peace” formulation.

But, as diplomats do, there was a lot of fuss about the wording of the resolution.  There was a lot of push and pull regarding that bit about “territories occupied in the recent conflict”. A keen observer will notice that it refers to “territories”, and not “the territories”. Presumably, final borders were to be left to negotiations. In any event, Israel has already withdrawn from something like 90% of the land captured in 1967. The West Bank comprises most of the remainder, although some prefer to say Judea and Samaria.

And that loaded phrase “occupied territories” – you may have heard Israeli officials speak of “administered territories”, which may well be a more accurate reading of the Geneva Convention. Even so, it’s too cute by half.

I could go on like this for hours, but I won’t.

Back when America was still great, there were only three career paths open to a decent lady: schoolteacher, nurse, and tradwife. Of course, Rosie the Riveter and her sisters helped defeat the Axis, but that was only because the guys were all over there doing the heavy lifting.

Today, women have many more opportunities. This led to a problem: Little Susie didn’t have a lot of obvious role models to emulate. Which led to a solution: “Take Your Daughter To Work Day”. Which led to some resentment: it just wasn’t fair to leave out the boys. Reverse discrimination! So now it’s called “Take Your Child To Work Day”. Pretty lame, for sure. And this leads us into a discussion of privilege, white privilege, or even worse, white male privilege.

I have no doubt all these variations of privilege do exist, but the word “privilege” really bites the big one. Here’s some mansplaining. If you’re preaching to the choir, then Yasher Koach! You go, girl! But when it comes to winning hearts and minds, fuhgeddaboudit.

I’m going to finish up with a thought on the word “genocide”. But before I do, here’s a quick trip to Carthage.

More than one of you has suggested that my more partisan thoughts might not be appropriate for Torah on Tap. To which I can only respond: malarkey! I don’t know where I picked up that word. The Torah is our most precious gift. If we can’t depend on it to inform us about what’s going on today, then we might as well – men and women together – dance our Torahs outside and toss them in the dumpster.

Let me start with this: it is a distraction and a waste of breath to talk about whether Trump is a Fascist. To be sure, there are some scary parallels with the 1930’s, and Trump uses the same rhetoric as Hitler and Mussolini. But Trump gets some of his talking points from Stalin, so I guess it’s a wash.

Then there’s this: when Iraq launched its war against Iran, Saddam insisted that the Persian Gulf be renamed the Arabian Gulf. Is this where Donny got the idea to rename the Gulf of Mexico? Come to think of it, Saddam had his name, portraits, and statues littered over just about every square inch of Iraq. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom pushed Saddam out of power, Iraq was under treaty obligation to allow inspections for WMD anywhere in the country. Saddam claimed various “Presidential Palaces” as off-limits to these searches. Similarly, ICE is required by law to allow congressional oversight in all its facilities, but the administration barred entry into some of its holding areas. Does any of this make Trump a Baathist? I’m just asking the question.

I have a dear friend whom I love very much. He’s, you know, one of them. He doesn’t wear a red cap on his head but has one on his heart. And he has an exceptionally good heart.

If I ask him about the corruption emanating from MAGA Largo, he’d counter with Hunter Biden’s laptop. Little Donald can’t open his mouth without lying. Doesn’t that matter? You’re forgetting all about Hillary’s emails! Don’t you even care about the rule of law’s coming demise? Blackwhite! Doubleplusungood! I do get a different response when it comes to the middle school insults that spew out of the Orange Moses’s mouth. He assures me that he doesn’t like everything Trump says. But believe me, pal o’mine, you own every word.

One of the most delightful aspects of the current administration is the performative cruelty. For example, we get to see ICE Barbie posing in front of a gulag in El Salvador with shave-headed prisoners deported without due process. And one of the official White House web accounts has an animated cartoon with crying migrants being carted off in chains. I never saw anything like that on Bugs Bunny. There is no bottom.

But all this pales next to one of the fever swamp’s favorites – the Great Replacement theory. For the uninitiated, this entails smuggling hordes of brown folks into the country. And wouldn’t you know it? That Holocaust survivor George Soros finances the whole business. In “Mein Kampf”, which every Jew should read, Hitler repeatedly warns about Jewish wirepullers. No doubt, those are the same guys who saddled us with DEI.

And now, back to my main topic.

Recently, a purveyor of fake news asked the president a nasty question about welcoming to our shores some Afrikaners yearning to breathe free. Undaunted, he started talking about the White Genocide that the mainstream media never reports.

Well, of course they don’t, because it doesn’t exist. But what really gets me is the way Trump drains the word genocide of any meaning. Just more grist for the mill. Red meat for the loyal base. He also likes to describe his own problems as the result of a blood libel. It’s like pissing on the memory of millions of victims. Put everything else aside. Any Jew who isn’t horrified at this trivialization of the Holocaust needs to get his, her, or their head out of his, her, or their ass.

Now, go and study.