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"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' "
A couple of incidents over the last couple of days have me thinking, without much result, about how we define words in order to mean what we'd like them to mean...
Sunday night at dancing, there was a discussion about whether a particular dance, Sapari, was an "Israeli Dance" or not- the session leader argued that they don't do it in Israel, so it isn't, while Bat Teiman is- and therefore we do the latter on Sunday nights, but not the former (at least, not unless said leader isn't there). The other positions given were that since the choreographer of Sapari has plenty of dances that Are Israeli dances, that are accepted as such, then this one, which shares the same choreographer, origin of music, Hebrew language, etc, must also count; that since it's in the repetoire of many, many Israeli dance groups, it doesn't matter if it Is an "Israeli Dance" or not- we should do it; and a final opinion that we should do whatever people want us to that's from before 1990.
The other event was much less dramatic- I was reading a comment on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sen_ichi_rei's LJ about whether or not someone who is not Orthodox, or who is Egalitarian, or however you want to look at the essential difference between Orthodoxy and other sorts of observant Judaism, and who did not grow up observant is a BT (a ba'at/ba'alat tshuvah) or not. That tends to link into the related question of what is the definition of frum/who is frum. (As if the "who is a Jew" question weren't bad/confusing/unanswerable enough.) I don't have much in the way of answers- but there are decidedly several sets of definitions of BT, or of frum, that tend to line up into a few different general categories. One such category sees Orthodoxy as the critical definition- of frumkeit, of being a BT. Another definition sees observance as the critical factor, and whether or not you want to call yourself Orthodox, or whether or not you want to get in that boat either ideologically or when it comes to specific issues is a different story, and a less important one. (And then "being frum" also has definitions that really do mean being particularly pious, regardless of one's sect/wing/movement/denomination, or being particularly pious For one's movement, and also a sort of cynical definition best conveyed by the term "frummer than thou". But those don't line up so much with meanings of the term BT. From this I think that we need different terms for at least some of these things.)
In both cases, there's a critical difference in the details of a term's definition. And further than that, it leads to miscommunications and frustration developping from them at times. It can get pretty complex. On the other hand, I don't have any good ways of differentiating the meanings into different words, or anything of the sort.
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' "
A couple of incidents over the last couple of days have me thinking, without much result, about how we define words in order to mean what we'd like them to mean...
Sunday night at dancing, there was a discussion about whether a particular dance, Sapari, was an "Israeli Dance" or not- the session leader argued that they don't do it in Israel, so it isn't, while Bat Teiman is- and therefore we do the latter on Sunday nights, but not the former (at least, not unless said leader isn't there). The other positions given were that since the choreographer of Sapari has plenty of dances that Are Israeli dances, that are accepted as such, then this one, which shares the same choreographer, origin of music, Hebrew language, etc, must also count; that since it's in the repetoire of many, many Israeli dance groups, it doesn't matter if it Is an "Israeli Dance" or not- we should do it; and a final opinion that we should do whatever people want us to that's from before 1990.
The other event was much less dramatic- I was reading a comment on
sen_ichi_rei's LJ about whether or not someone who is not Orthodox, or who is Egalitarian, or however you want to look at the essential difference between Orthodoxy and other sorts of observant Judaism, and who did not grow up observant is a BT (a ba'at/ba'alat tshuvah) or not. That tends to link into the related question of what is the definition of frum/who is frum. (As if the "who is a Jew" question weren't bad/confusing/unanswerable enough.) I don't have much in the way of answers- but there are decidedly several sets of definitions of BT, or of frum, that tend to line up into a few different general categories. One such category sees Orthodoxy as the critical definition- of frumkeit, of being a BT. Another definition sees observance as the critical factor, and whether or not you want to call yourself Orthodox, or whether or not you want to get in that boat either ideologically or when it comes to specific issues is a different story, and a less important one. (And then "being frum" also has definitions that really do mean being particularly pious, regardless of one's sect/wing/movement/denomination, or being particularly pious For one's movement, and also a sort of cynical definition best conveyed by the term "frummer than thou". But those don't line up so much with meanings of the term BT. From this I think that we need different terms for at least some of these things.) In both cases, there's a critical difference in the details of a term's definition. And further than that, it leads to miscommunications and frustration developping from them at times. It can get pretty complex. On the other hand, I don't have any good ways of differentiating the meanings into different words, or anything of the sort.