Dental Hygiene

I'm a big fan of dental hygiene- sometimes a bit too much so, especially when combined with an interesting novel. But sometimes, I swear my dental floss is out to get me.

Unrelatedly, why did my CA bring her bowl of cereal into the bathroom with her, leave it above the sink, and then take it with her again when she left?

Dental Hygiene

I'm a big fan of dental hygiene- sometimes a bit too much so, especially when combined with an interesting novel. But sometimes, I swear my dental floss is out to get me.

Unrelatedly, why did my CA bring her bowl of cereal into the bathroom with her, leave it above the sink, and then take it with her again when she left?

On Gender Inclusativity And Gender Neutrality, or on Liturgy in General

I tend to think a lot about various alterations and adaptations of liturgy: it's one of my favorite bits of mind candy, ever since in I think 6th grade, we were instructed to take the usual page 306 out of our prayer pamplets (those large-print sort-of bound copies of parts of the prayer-book that my shul used for it's 4-7th graders) and put in a new one- with the Matriarchs included. A fairly short while after that- a few years, I guess, they got the newer grey Gates of Prayer: the ones with "gender-sensative" language. And well, as ideologically happy as I am to have some of those additions, that version of liturgy just sounded really strange to me for a while. (This was before I really did All that much thinking about such things, so the ideology is a more recent overlay on the story, for one. Secondly, all that liturgy sounds a bit funny to me either way: the English is too darned flowery, but I'm talking about Outside of that.) Going from "Hear oh Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is one" to "Hear oh Israel, the Eternal is our G-d, the Eternal is one" was just strange (once again, ignoring the fact that sometimes I think it would work better to start off with "Listen Up, Israel", with perhaps the addition of "you there, stop talking in the back: don't you think G-d can hear you?"- ahh, too many formative years spent teaching religious school).

I've been happier since I swapped to a rather more traditional liturgy, to the point of getting annoyed with the Conservative shul at home where they cut most of Psukei D'Zimra, etc. Overall, I'm a traditionalist- I don't Like making changes, I think the usual Hebrew is pretty powerful, and albeit I've only been using this liturgy for a couple of years, but it still randomly amazes me. I have a tendency to think that anything that's worked this well for this long must be pretty good, and one should have a pretty strong reason to want to change it.

But still- there are some textual changes that I just can't bring myself to unmake. (I definitely have issues about asking to reinstate sacrifices, although I have no problem, and in fact like, mentioning what they were- I like the connection to the past as well as the future that that provides. But that's another issue.) At this point I'm comfortable adding the matriarchs to my prayers when the patriarchs are mentioned, and while I have no objection to other people not doing so- after all, I remember making that modification myself: it's hardly some ancient tradition, I have no desire to stop mentioning them. I do hold that since masculine plurals include the feminine in Hebrew, that's just the way the language works, that saying "Avot v'Imahot" (the Patriarchs And Matriarchs) is making it seem like the matriarchs weren't being included before in what is a fairly general term. I have similar issues with the idea of using the completely traditional liturgy for the morning blessings: I have no problems with thanking G-d for creating me in G-d's image, or with men thanking G-d for not creating them as women: I understand the reasoning behind the blessing, and in non-egalitarian contexts, it does make sense. But the idea of making the two equivalent bothers me, especially since as much as the apologetics about women being on a higher spiritual plane are pretty and flattering, I just can't believe them. If that were true, why couldn't everyone thank G-d for being made in G-d's image and also thank G-d for not being the other gender?- after all, either way, one has a reason to be glad. (I do know that it would break the train of logic, but I'm sure there's some explanation that would work just fine.)

But if I'm such a traditionalist in my general practice, why are there some changes I just can't quite stomach for my own use? I guess that at some level my general philosophy kicks in a bit too strongly. Luckily the liturgy used at most minyanim where I'd be most comfortable matches my preferences pretty well. When I go home- not so much, and when I go to Orthodox (capital O) shuls, no- but over all, it works. That said, I often find passages of the liturgy that I originally found difficult and hard to say the most meaningful, because I invested so much energy into them and how to make them meaningful rather than insulting or theologicaly disturbing. So what makes these different? Is there some line past which I can not make things workable for me? Or is it that I haven't tried hard enough? Not that I'm unhappy with the liturgy that I use- I'm not, but it does make me wonder.

That all said, (to change tracks a bit) there's a Big difference between making things gender-inclusive and trying to make them gender-neutral. Adding matriarchs, or making oneself more aware of feminine G-d imagery, or potentially feminine G-d imagery (since the Rekhem/Rakhamim connection is really only folk etymology, although on the other hand it's awfully convincing folk etymology, and that stuff leaks into Jewish theology all the time anyways) is rather significantly different from the efforts, mostly in English, to utterly remove gender from the text. It feels like a bumbling attempt to rob the liturgy of some of its meaning and power. Non gender-specific G-d language just feels forced, and it is often a bad translation, since that's a concept that doesn't really exist in Hebrew. I admire the idea, as I often do with innovative liturgy, but I find the use much less significant than the original text or something closer to the original text. I suppose I'm more comfortable adding material to the text than changing it- which, as I write this, seems like a particularly Jewish attitude.

On Gender Inclusativity And Gender Neutrality, or on Liturgy in General

I tend to think a lot about various alterations and adaptations of liturgy: it's one of my favorite bits of mind candy, ever since in I think 6th grade, we were instructed to take the usual page 306 out of our prayer pamplets (those large-print sort-of bound copies of parts of the prayer-book that my shul used for it's 4-7th graders) and put in a new one- with the Matriarchs included. A fairly short while after that- a few years, I guess, they got the newer grey Gates of Prayer: the ones with "gender-sensative" language. And well, as ideologically happy as I am to have some of those additions, that version of liturgy just sounded really strange to me for a while. (This was before I really did All that much thinking about such things, so the ideology is a more recent overlay on the story, for one. Secondly, all that liturgy sounds a bit funny to me either way: the English is too darned flowery, but I'm talking about Outside of that.) Going from "Hear oh Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is one" to "Hear oh Israel, the Eternal is our G-d, the Eternal is one" was just strange (once again, ignoring the fact that sometimes I think it would work better to start off with "Listen Up, Israel", with perhaps the addition of "you there, stop talking in the back: don't you think G-d can hear you?"- ahh, too many formative years spent teaching religious school).

I've been happier since I swapped to a rather more traditional liturgy, to the point of getting annoyed with the Conservative shul at home where they cut most of Psukei D'Zimra, etc. Overall, I'm a traditionalist- I don't Like making changes, I think the usual Hebrew is pretty powerful, and albeit I've only been using this liturgy for a couple of years, but it still randomly amazes me. I have a tendency to think that anything that's worked this well for this long must be pretty good, and one should have a pretty strong reason to want to change it.

But still- there are some textual changes that I just can't bring myself to unmake. (I definitely have issues about asking to reinstate sacrifices, although I have no problem, and in fact like, mentioning what they were- I like the connection to the past as well as the future that that provides. But that's another issue.) At this point I'm comfortable adding the matriarchs to my prayers when the patriarchs are mentioned, and while I have no objection to other people not doing so- after all, I remember making that modification myself: it's hardly some ancient tradition, I have no desire to stop mentioning them. I do hold that since masculine plurals include the feminine in Hebrew, that's just the way the language works, that saying "Avot v'Imahot" (the Patriarchs And Matriarchs) is making it seem like the matriarchs weren't being included before in what is a fairly general term. I have similar issues with the idea of using the completely traditional liturgy for the morning blessings: I have no problems with thanking G-d for creating me in G-d's image, or with men thanking G-d for not creating them as women: I understand the reasoning behind the blessing, and in non-egalitarian contexts, it does make sense. But the idea of making the two equivalent bothers me, especially since as much as the apologetics about women being on a higher spiritual plane are pretty and flattering, I just can't believe them. If that were true, why couldn't everyone thank G-d for being made in G-d's image and also thank G-d for not being the other gender?- after all, either way, one has a reason to be glad. (I do know that it would break the train of logic, but I'm sure there's some explanation that would work just fine.)

But if I'm such a traditionalist in my general practice, why are there some changes I just can't quite stomach for my own use? I guess that at some level my general philosophy kicks in a bit too strongly. Luckily the liturgy used at most minyanim where I'd be most comfortable matches my preferences pretty well. When I go home- not so much, and when I go to Orthodox (capital O) shuls, no- but over all, it works. That said, I often find passages of the liturgy that I originally found difficult and hard to say the most meaningful, because I invested so much energy into them and how to make them meaningful rather than insulting or theologicaly disturbing. So what makes these different? Is there some line past which I can not make things workable for me? Or is it that I haven't tried hard enough? Not that I'm unhappy with the liturgy that I use- I'm not, but it does make me wonder.

That all said, (to change tracks a bit) there's a Big difference between making things gender-inclusive and trying to make them gender-neutral. Adding matriarchs, or making oneself more aware of feminine G-d imagery, or potentially feminine G-d imagery (since the Rekhem/Rakhamim connection is really only folk etymology, although on the other hand it's awfully convincing folk etymology, and that stuff leaks into Jewish theology all the time anyways) is rather significantly different from the efforts, mostly in English, to utterly remove gender from the text. It feels like a bumbling attempt to rob the liturgy of some of its meaning and power. Non gender-specific G-d language just feels forced, and it is often a bad translation, since that's a concept that doesn't really exist in Hebrew. I admire the idea, as I often do with innovative liturgy, but I find the use much less significant than the original text or something closer to the original text. I suppose I'm more comfortable adding material to the text than changing it- which, as I write this, seems like a particularly Jewish attitude.