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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Heteropraxis4/05/2006 20:04:05Two lectures, two days, two models of heteropraxis, doing wrong (or somesuch) in a way that is right. Yesterday Ben Barney came to talk, a Navajo professor at Dine College, former dancer with Martha Graham, shepherd, and friend of one of my teachers, Mark Cladis. One of his major themes was of the world within a world of the native people - being located inside a country without being citizens. He talked about the experience of traveling among the tribes, going to an Apache village and following all their customs and so on but still not being an Apache, being a Navajo. That awareness, he insists, can persist. Similarly he talked about eating fish in New York City. To his people, fish are ancestors. To eat fish is to eat his ancestors. But when he's in Gotham, sure, he'll eat fish, that's different. Not in front of any relatives of course. Barney's discussion reminded me of the "as if not" (I think that's the phrase) that Agamben points out in his study of Romans. He also said that Navajos, especially of his grandparents' generation, took on the habit of collecting baptisms from all the Christian missionaries always coming through trying to rescue the heathens. His grandmother had maybe twelve. We should take what we can get. Then today Rabbi Menachem Creditor came to talk ostensibly about homosexuality and inclusiveness in the Conservative movement. He is an ouspoken advocate of inclusivity in the movement, which still maintains an ambiguous position on these questions. His approach, though, was not to talk about homosexuality at all. To the shagrin of the Episcopalian pastor who said he came to hear about homosexuality in the Hebrew scriptures, the talk consciously avoided them. This was an important choice - it put aside the deep feelings that many of us reserve for the question and instead we used other examples, particularly the halacha on mamzerut. The question at issue, rather than homosexuality proper, was the possibility of questioning something that is stated clearly in the Scripture or tradition on the grounds of moral assurance. He came to no conclusions but he did take the wonderful step of making space for that within the confines of Torah and tradition and Jewishness. We are all in worlds within worlds within worlds against worlds, and the universe holds us by tiny strings. But this is a fight. "We are a fighting people," said Barney. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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