Mine! All Mine!

The issue of cultural (mis)appropriation came up very briefly in the discussion in my online class for which I’m writing this blog and I have a couple thoughts:

The first is how easy it is (for myself too!) to get out the thesaurus whenever there’s some uneasy about potentially unethical behavior. Cultural appropriation is itself a rather euphemistic term. It definitely sounds more acceptable than, say, stealing. Or cultural theft or rape or exploitation, for example. I think there are a lot of different levels of complicated realities going on when we (especially if ‘we’ come from a dominant cultural location) are trying to figure out how to engage and learn from all the cool traditions in our world. So I’m not saying it’s all necessarily 100 % exploitative, mind you.

But some of it is, right? In Unitarian Universalism we talk a lot about sharing religious and cultural resources. Sometimes I think this is a good term for considering our work and its relationship(s) to other collective groups. Yet sometimes I feel like we’re skirting a less pleasant truth, which is one about power and agency and who has it and how that impacts who feels free to use or share what. Even though words are important, I want to hang onto the feeling that this is life and death stuff and not a contest about nuanced vocabulary.

When this came up as an aside in our class discussion, it called to mind how disappointed I’ve been to find such a low functioning conversation about these issues at Starr King School. A couple years ago I took an amazing class from a fellow student of mine, Carol Bodeau. She’s this great teacher and activist who offered a class called Paganism in a UU Context. I sort of stumbled into the course in a less intentional way than how I usually pick classes and was totally welcomed and educated. We should all be so lucky!

ANYWAY, in Carol’s class we talked some about what is means for primarily white, non-indigenous folks, like many of those who make up and define UU communities, to get all enamored with the stylish depth of different Native American ritual practices. That conversation may have been the saddest and angriest I’ve been in a class at seminary. We acknowledged that there was this concept that some people held and believed in of cultural appropriation and then debated whether or not it was real and existed. I couldn’t believe that we actually arguing about whether or not power hierarchies and colonial gaze and imperialism was real! Or, if it was real, whether or not it impacted how we dealt with our own and others’ cultures.

It’s a whole other conversation to start from a perspective of accepting the reality of people sometimes not having control over their cultures’ destinies and having questions about when that is and/or isn’t going on in a particular worship service or ideology or whatever. But if we can’t even agree that occasionally dominant cultures take what isn’t quite theirs, then we’ll never get to a place where we can have that deeper conversation. And I want to!

As Usual: More Questions than Answers

Questions of authority arise when we undertake projects of deconstruction. How do we remain open to questions, content to rest in those questions, and still be firm in who we are and what we think and feel?

One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had was with the Unitarian Universalist high school youth group I used to advise. The teens were talking about how to describe our religion and its values. Some people expressed that we were totally open and accepting of everything, everyone and every kind of belief. And then I challenged that a little. Are we really open to everything under the sun? Like, do we accept people who litter? Yeah. Sure. Do we accept people who don’t believe in marriage equality? Yeah, but that’s not a super commonly expressed view. And collectively we try to welcome a journey towards belief in equality. Do we accept people who deny the Nazi Holocaust? Not really. Hopefully we can hold space for them to be human, yet most folks in most UU congregations would find the expression of these beliefs repugnant.

These might not be stellar examples, yet I hope they can be of some use. The central question in all this is: How open should we aspire to be?

My Cherry Tree

Recently I’ve been thinking about how often I google stuff and pass it off as my own knowledge. It’s so easy to do and the random basic websites that pop us, especially when I google really basic Jewish stuff, like the names of holy days, are such important resources in my life. That seems a little embarrassing to me when I type it but, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie.

Being a Jew in a primarily non-Jewish environment means that I often get cast in the role of Person Who Shall Educate. This usually happens because people know I’m Jewish and want to learn about Judaism and validate me and my existence. While I appreciate the intent, often the impact can be intense.

Occasionally it feels like a burden and I have to remind myself that transformative change happens slowly and not by me standing up and shouting, “Go look it up your damn self unless you are going to pay me to be your tutor!” Of course, sometimes I feel really good about sharing whatever information I posses, especially when I actually have something interesting and knowledgeable to offer. Yet when I have no idea how to answer the question, I can feel humiliated. If I can’t be Expert Jew, after all, I must be Fake Jew. This may (or may not) seem pretty simplistic, but these categories do exist-- and not only in my insecure mind.

And so, I totally use sites like jewfaq.com and myjewishlearning.com when non-Jews ask me questions about Jewish-ness that I have no idea how to answer. Then I can look stuff up, internally merge it with my own background and knowing and pretend like religious Jewish etiquette just welled up in my soul, despite having a Dad who’s barely darkened the door of synagogue since he made his bar mitzvah.