Introductions

Recently someone emailed the Lishma email-group with an introduction, and invited other folks to follow suite. Being the correspondence-nut that I am (and being that I'm being receptionist today at work, and am out of jobs to do besides waiting for the phone to ring and smiling at the people setting up for the Bris tonight, I decided to write my own introduction as well. It's a weird thing to do- how do you sum up who you are in a paragraph, especially an informal one? I mean, I took the usual approach of giving my university, major, minor, some hobbies and intellectual interests. But what does that really say about me? I mean- I've had correspondences with people I hadn't met/had met only briefly- and people are just entirely different in writing. But even in person- what does an introduction really say about you? It's like trying to describe a color to a blind person, almost- to use an entirely overused metaphor. It just seems so useless- and yet everyone has this impulse to do it, and it's reassuring to feel like you'll know the people you'll be meeting a little bit, even though the images one can build up via correspondence can be more confusing than helpful much of the time.

Introductions

Recently someone emailed the Lishma email-group with an introduction, and invited other folks to follow suite. Being the correspondence-nut that I am (and being that I'm being receptionist today at work, and am out of jobs to do besides waiting for the phone to ring and smiling at the people setting up for the Bris tonight, I decided to write my own introduction as well. It's a weird thing to do- how do you sum up who you are in a paragraph, especially an informal one? I mean, I took the usual approach of giving my university, major, minor, some hobbies and intellectual interests. But what does that really say about me? I mean- I've had correspondences with people I hadn't met/had met only briefly- and people are just entirely different in writing. But even in person- what does an introduction really say about you? It's like trying to describe a color to a blind person, almost- to use an entirely overused metaphor. It just seems so useless- and yet everyone has this impulse to do it, and it's reassuring to feel like you'll know the people you'll be meeting a little bit, even though the images one can build up via correspondence can be more confusing than helpful much of the time.

Fundamentalism

I think back in high school I wrote something about the perils of fundamentalism. I really don't remember what I wrote, but it's probably still online on my geocities website. It's funny to think about- that (asI think I mentioned recently) my mom looks at my religious outlook, and pretty much sees something fairly fundamentalist. And in some ways, I suppose that she's right, from a secular viewpoint. I can't see it myself though: I can't see someone who is gender-egalitarian as a fundamentalist in Judaism, especially not someone who is more than willing to compromise about Torah MiSinai (the belief that the Torah was given complete from G-d to Moses on Mount Sinai, and that hte entire Oral Law was also given at that time), even if the latter idea is one that has Plenty of backing in traditional sources. Maybe that says something about the current state of Jewish theology as much, or more so than it does about my own beliefs and behaviors, but I always did see fundamentalism as something based on belief, not behavior. But perhaps that is because it's a term I first learned as associated with Christianity, which deals far more strictly and detailedly(as far as I can tell) with theology in comparison to practice than observant forms of Judaism do. I do wonder if, by that definition, one could call someone who is completely non-practicing, but believes in Torah MiSinai a fundamentalist. Yet that seems to miss some part of the package as well.

Fundamentalism

I think back in high school I wrote something about the perils of fundamentalism. I really don't remember what I wrote, but it's probably still online on my geocities website. It's funny to think about- that (asI think I mentioned recently) my mom looks at my religious outlook, and pretty much sees something fairly fundamentalist. And in some ways, I suppose that she's right, from a secular viewpoint. I can't see it myself though: I can't see someone who is gender-egalitarian as a fundamentalist in Judaism, especially not someone who is more than willing to compromise about Torah MiSinai (the belief that the Torah was given complete from G-d to Moses on Mount Sinai, and that hte entire Oral Law was also given at that time), even if the latter idea is one that has Plenty of backing in traditional sources. Maybe that says something about the current state of Jewish theology as much, or more so than it does about my own beliefs and behaviors, but I always did see fundamentalism as something based on belief, not behavior. But perhaps that is because it's a term I first learned as associated with Christianity, which deals far more strictly and detailedly(as far as I can tell) with theology in comparison to practice than observant forms of Judaism do. I do wonder if, by that definition, one could call someone who is completely non-practicing, but believes in Torah MiSinai a fundamentalist. Yet that seems to miss some part of the package as well.