A couple weeks ago I got very excited by the idea that the name for our historical priests ("Levi") was very similar to "Lah-vi", which means "my heart". Further research dispelled this notion; there are two letters that make the "v" sound, and the similarity of the two is merely coincidental, not indicative of a linguistic link. Still, the idea intrigued me enough that I wanted to spend some time playing with it.
Following the link in one direction, the priests become the heart of the community. The vital organ that keeps blood and life flowing through our communal body. While the modern rabbi is very different in many ways from historical priests, this part remains the same. More than leading prayers, more than teaching the youth, the rabbi's job is to keep the vital energy flowing through the congregation, spreading prayer, education, and administration where they are needed like nutrients through the bloodstream.
Moving in the other direction, I love the image that each of us has our own personal priest residing in our chest. We do not need external clergy to regulate our connection with the divine; we can create prayers, interpret the law, and talk or listen to god all on our own. This is the voice inside us that reminds us what is right and what is wrong. Beyond the written Torah and the oral Torah we have this inner Torah; we study the others just to remind ourselves of what our hearts already know.
It's probably because of my love of puns, but I am less willing to believe in pure coincidence than most scholars when it comes to words sounding alike. Granted, every language has words they assimilated from other cultures, which greatly heightens the evidence for "coincidence", but one of these terms is a name. That means at some point someone said, "I like the way this word sounds! I want to be called that for the rest of my life." Someone else, knowing the meaning of the name, chose it for their child. Interestingly, the name "Levi" is translated as "joining"; some sources attribute this to Leah's desire for Jacob to join with her. Even if it is a coincidence, there is a very pleasing resonance between "joining" and "my heart".
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
This word upsets me
It's not often I get upset about a word. I mean, just about the fact of a word. Use of a word? Sure. But getting mad at a word just for existing? Not often.
Then I found this word:
ambisinister (\ am-bi-SIN-uh-ster \ , adjective)
1. Clumsy or unskillful with both hands.
Yes, the opposite of "ambidextrous", meaning "skilled with both hands". But literally, "both right-handed".
By contrast, "ambisinister" is "both left-handed".
As someone who is skilled with his left hand, I take offense. Especially since, ironically, I am an ambidextrous fencer that is better with the left hand and strives to bring the right hand up to that standard.
Am I seriously mad about this? Not really. It's always bothered me that "left handed" became a synonym for evil. The French gauche comes from "left" and means "awkward or lacking social grace". And given how many people have been tortured throughout the ages into being right handed, and the developmental issues that followed, this is obviously more than a semantic issue.
It's also an interesting reminder of how fundamentally some of our prejudices are worked into our language. Many of these words have lost their original sting now, many generations later, when the original slur is forgotten and the word has taken on new and independent life, but it is still an interesting inheritance. Grade school teachers no longer force students to use their right hands in penmanship classes, but students that do well with either hand are still said to write with their left as if it were their right.
So what do we do now when we find these words? Remove them? Change them? Shrug and move on? It's a linguistic version of the issue many countries face: our land was taken from these indigenous people by force, decades or centuries ago, but now there is a new nation built upon that spot with history and culture of its own. Do we uproot and destroy it to right the wrong done by our ancestors to yours? Or just accept that our country was built on blood, and strive to do better in the future?
Then I found this word:
ambisinister (\ am-bi-SIN-uh-ster \ , adjective)
1. Clumsy or unskillful with both hands.
Yes, the opposite of "ambidextrous", meaning "skilled with both hands". But literally, "both right-handed".
By contrast, "ambisinister" is "both left-handed".
As someone who is skilled with his left hand, I take offense. Especially since, ironically, I am an ambidextrous fencer that is better with the left hand and strives to bring the right hand up to that standard.
Am I seriously mad about this? Not really. It's always bothered me that "left handed" became a synonym for evil. The French gauche comes from "left" and means "awkward or lacking social grace". And given how many people have been tortured throughout the ages into being right handed, and the developmental issues that followed, this is obviously more than a semantic issue.
It's also an interesting reminder of how fundamentally some of our prejudices are worked into our language. Many of these words have lost their original sting now, many generations later, when the original slur is forgotten and the word has taken on new and independent life, but it is still an interesting inheritance. Grade school teachers no longer force students to use their right hands in penmanship classes, but students that do well with either hand are still said to write with their left as if it were their right.
So what do we do now when we find these words? Remove them? Change them? Shrug and move on? It's a linguistic version of the issue many countries face: our land was taken from these indigenous people by force, decades or centuries ago, but now there is a new nation built upon that spot with history and culture of its own. Do we uproot and destroy it to right the wrong done by our ancestors to yours? Or just accept that our country was built on blood, and strive to do better in the future?
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