Kesher Talk

Culture wars.

NOTE: if you are looking for the feminism post, it's here. I took it offline and reworked it and reposted it.

Okay, culture wars. Sometimes a topic really gets me riled up and I post a lot on other people's comment threads. This comment was getting really long so I just decided to put it here:

You can't enjoy all these cute heirloom fruits and vegetables that are all the rage now unless others save the seeds and plant them and learn the growing methods, and you can't enjoy all these exotic ethnic musics and clothes and art and cuisines - and religious paths that some of you sample like appetizers, yoga one week and sweatlodge the next and kabbalah the next - unless there are distinct healthy cultures being preserved at the root of each of them.

You need a critical mass of people with a certain way of life and attitude toward reality to perpetuate a particular food, music, language, philosophy, way of life. Once it's gone, it's gone. Its loss is as devastating to the richness of human history as the extinction of a species is to an ecosystem.

If I live in an area where there aren't enough Jews who know the nusach and Hebrew text of the daily prayer service to make a minyan every day (plus people who can gabbai and leyn Torah on Mondays and Thursdays, and lead the services) it doesn't get done. That implies a critical mass of both knowledge and desire, which has to be passed on.

It is of vast importance to me that this continues - it doesn't have a whole lot to do with God per se (for me - YMMV), but with the sounds and feels and textures of the rituals themselves (in addition to the necessity of a quorum of ten Jews needed to recite certain parts of the liturgy, including the Mourner's Kaddish). I won't try to explain why, because I don't have to justify it to outsiders. I am sure many other ethnic/religious groups feel the same way about various aspects of their culture, and I "get" what that is about for them. People who can only identify the desire to continue a rich complex way of life with "victimhood" or "separation" don't "get it."

Modern (or post-modern?) people want to have multi-ethnic variety available to them as some sort of exotic decoration to their lives, while at the same time dissing the love and belonging and commitment, and - yes, separation and distinction - that make genuine cultural expression possible.

If you think all cultural alliegance is stupid, then you should only eat MacDonalds, listen to synth, and wear clothes from the Gap. Maybe you do - that's fine for you. Some of us have other deep soul needs, and we aren't asking you permission to nourish them. We are happy to put on show-and-tell sessions, and some of our groups aren't restricted to those born into them (there's probably more interest in conversion to Judaism now than any time since the Roman Empire). Some are hard to join, but possible if they really speak to you - for example, I had a very WASP friend who married a Singaporean and was accepted into that notoriously clannish culture because he "got it" - they called him an "egg": white on the outside and yellow on the inside.

If you aren't drawn to a particular culture, fine. You don't have to have one. But I get the impression that some of you are really jealous of those who do, and that's why you put us down so much. If you are really okay with not having one of your own, you shouldn't care if we do. And if you do enjoy all that multi-ethnic background color in your life, at least respect where it comes from.

posted by Judith @ 9/04/2003 02:08:04 AM