tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post2658367065764831209..comments2024-01-04T08:02:29.500-05:00Comments on Attempts: "A person is obligated to regard himself as if": An Atheist Jew's Reflections on the SederStephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16524368948187746248noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-38095530585355393972014-04-13T15:45:25.305-04:002014-04-13T15:45:25.305-04:00OK, you asked for it, so I am commenting on your t...OK, you asked for it, so I am commenting on your translation of the phrase from the Haggadah.<br /><br />In the first footnote, you write: <br />"Normally I would alter the translation to be gender-neutral -- "each person is obliged to regard themselves as if they personally", or something like that. (And the word in the Hebrew is adam -- human -- not ish, man.) But Hebrew is such a gendered language that every verb expresses gender, and my sense is that a gender neutral translation here would inevitably be unfaithful to the text." <br /><br />However, it is precisely *because* Hebrew is a gendered language that a gender neutral translation is entirely appropriate here. Every noun in Hebrew has a grammatical gender, including inanimate objects like "chair" and abstract nouns like "happiness". That doesn't mean that Hebrew speakers think that chairs are male; it's just grammar. In the same way, the noun "person" has to have a gender, which happens to be masculine. A different noun that the Bible sometimes uses to talk about a generic person is "soul"; that noun happens to have a feminine gender, so the adjectives, pronouns, and verbs in those passages are feminine. In both cases, though, the meaning is completely gender neutral.<br /><br />English is not a gendered language, *except* in the case of third-person singular pronouns. Indeed, until a few decades ago, the phrase "In every generation, a person should see himself..." would have been considered gender neutral; the use of a masculine pronoun in this context was simply a rule of English grammar, and would have been accepted as such by even the most feminist of English speakers. <br /><br />But our generation has decided (reasonably) that in this case English grammar itself was sexist (i.e. reflecting the sexist attitudes of our society). We therefore changed the English language, by making it standard to use alternative pronouns such as "him/herself" or "themselves". Thus in contemporary American English (or at least the dialect of it that you speak), your gendered translation of the gender-neutral Hebrew phrase is inaccurate. You should be using gender-neutral pronouns.<br /><br />Modern Hebrew is having its own issues with sexist grammar, which are being worked out as we speak. The fact that each noun has a gender is not sexist and I don't think anyone is worrying about that. But the fact that the gender-neutral form of "you" is the masculine form (so that, for example, all Biblical commandments are addressed to a male) certainly seems sexist. Again, within this sexist grammar, all those commandments were in fact gender-neutral: it wouldn't have occurred to anyone that argue that women were allowed to kill because the phrase "Thou shalt not kill" was in masculine form. But just like modern English-speakers, many modern Hebrew speakers have been making some attempt to address the sexism underlying the grammar. Nowadays, instructions in official documents are either written in the plural (which used to be gendered, but modern Hebrew has gotten rid of the feminine form a while ago) or use a trick analogous to "him/herself". I wouldn't yet call this a change in the language, since it's also still perfectly acceptable to use the masculine "you" as a generic. But it may be moving in that direction; the feeling I get is roughly what I remember from the US in the 1990's.<br /><br />In any case, though, the phrase from the Hagaddah is in the third person, where there is no issue of sexism in Hebrew, only in English. So you have no excuse! :)<br /><br />Happy Passover to people of all and no gender!MBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07124333056099057013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-34408276184091085812013-03-29T12:00:42.024-04:002013-03-29T12:00:42.024-04:00A good read, sir, and thought provoking.
There ...A good read, sir, and thought provoking. <br /><br />There is value in an imaginative exploration of allegory, story, myth. Our brains are wired to imbue meaning where nothing means anything, a la Camus. But there is an opportunity in The Great Stories of our cultures to inform a more pleasant life. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00525702018157874557noreply@blogger.com