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Cultural appropriation
Pursuant to a conversation elsewhere, a poll!
NOTE! For the purpose of this poll, "foreigner" refers to someone who is foreign in several ways:
1. he has no familial claim to the culture (no relation by blood or marriage);
2. he does not and has not lived in the culture;
3. he has no deep knowledge or understanding of the culture, and/or does not speak the language.
Use the comments to clarify anything you like.
(Note: I submitted blank answers but that's only so I can easily see poll results without changing them; one should not infer from that that I think all the options are inappropriate.)
[Poll #1267976]
NOTE! For the purpose of this poll, "foreigner" refers to someone who is foreign in several ways:
1. he has no familial claim to the culture (no relation by blood or marriage);
2. he does not and has not lived in the culture;
3. he has no deep knowledge or understanding of the culture, and/or does not speak the language.
Use the comments to clarify anything you like.
(Note: I submitted blank answers but that's only so I can easily see poll results without changing them; one should not infer from that that I think all the options are inappropriate.)
[Poll #1267976]
no subject
Although there are two points worth noting about why any Jew who said you didn't belong at a Sedar would have serious conflicts with Judaism:
The biggest one is that one of the requirements of the Sedar is to open your door and invite anyone who wants to come in to come in. Sure, that's just for the meal and the rest of the Sedar, but coming by slightly early... it is hard to justify excluding someone from a Sedar when the family invites them.
The second is that the Sedar is partly about teaching the story and teaching understanding of what happened. Generally that is meant to be for the children, but gentiles can count if they're not yet familiar with it.
... I also think there's a difference between being a guest at someone else's celebration, which I think is always okay and creating your own celebration. It can be a bit insulting to celebrate someone else's holiday when you don't even understand it. I wouldn't want to make it illegal, but I might think less of someone or find it in poor taste for them to do it. I especially dislike when people take things of deep meaning and significance to some people and do them simply for their fun value or aesthetic value. However, if you do so significantly privately, then I'm okay with it.
Meh, too many subtle distinctions for me to come up with any clear position on this. Just too many possible factors for what people are doing and how they are doing it.
no subject
He always considered it especially important given the historical context of Judaism, the misinformation and persecution. Had a good pedigree, too - I remember him pointing out, during the course of the evening, "And now we open the door for the prophet Elijah, which we started doing in the middle ages, and has the nice side-effect of letting the neighbors see we aren't murdering any Christian babies in here."
Talking about it beyond the specific, though, is definitely a bit too broad. It's something that's really case-by-case, sadly based a lot on judgment and common sense, the former of which varies wildly and the latter of which is decidedly uncommon.
no subject
I'm vegetarian... the idea of consuming the blood of a baby is rather repugnant on so many levels. Besides, bloos is so horribly unkosher.
Hmmm, ummm don't people need to be able to appropriate Yiddish? I mean, we need words like "chutzpah" and "schmuck" whether or not it's your culture.
Actually, I'm going to say I have a right to grab any word from any culture that fills a linguistic gap. Schaudenfraude may be a word I can't really spell or pronounce quite right, but it's a very useful word, because it describes a concept that cannot be as easily spoken of if I don't grab it. Besides, my native language is English and my cultural linguistic history is thus stealing vocabulary from anywhere we can get it.
I think, in general, it needs to be okay to use things that are outright useful. I don't want someone to tell me I can't study yoga or a martial art just because I have no special connection to it. If a culture finds a medical practice that actually heals people, then they don't get to keep it just for themselves. Useful things that go beyond, wow that's cool and fun, need to be shared.
no subject
Yiddish has a certain radius of effect, but, yeah, I think you at least can't live near an east coast metro area with appropriating a fair amount of the vocab. Hell, I used to work at a place that sold "Washington Schlepped Here" t-shirts - well, tried to sell. The boss being from New York, it took other people to explain why a lot of our long-distance visitors weren't snapping that hilarious item right up.
no subject