Is Greenday Right?

From sunset on Wednesday, 4/12 to sunset on Thursday 4/20 it was Passover. So any even slightly observant Jew was giving up bread for those eight days. At a meeting on Tuesday, 4/18, we had sandwich fixin's. As a vegetarian, I have long since gotten used to the idea that meat will be served at things like this, and as I've never kept kosher I certainly wouldn't complain about the frequency of things like meat as pizza toppings (kashrut forbids eating milk and meat), though I have been annoyed when all the plain or veggie is gone and all that's left is pepperoni, but that's only happened once that I can remember. But it was frustrating to have been on a bread fast and then have been served sandwiches. There were veggies and fruit, so I didn't go hungry, but I was tempted, and I noticed the other Jew who was there eating a ham sandwich, of all things. So what's my point?

Just because you aren't overtly/consciously prejudiced, you may still be making life harder for a minority. That wasn't the only time this particular organization has done this. The past Rosh Hashannah was on a Tuesday, and when the club meeting had low attendance, a chastising email was sent out, with no awareness that there was a religious holiday. The next week, the training meeting was switched from its original date to Yom Kippur. Meanwhile, Valentine's Day, which is not religiously significant to anyone I know, and a giant pain in the ass to many single people, was carefully scheduled around. Though the person who provided us with sandwiches certainly wasn't on some sort of antisemitic rampage, the fact is that as a minority, my needs weren't known; it wasn't antisemitism, but it was still a hostile environment. And this at a school that is ~20% Jewish and has one of the best attended Hillels and Jewish Studies programs in the country (I think. Don't cite me on this.)

I don't know what to suggest to correct this problem. I freely admit that I'm not very good at keeping track of the start of Ramadan, or when Tet is. So maybe the answer is just that we all need to make an effort ot be more culturally aware. But if you live in a community with only one Vietnamese person or a handful of Muslim people. . . you might not be at a level of awareness to even know you need to be more aware. And then there's the question of how much minorities need to be willing to assimilate. I've always been of the mind that immigrants should make an effort to learn English, because that's the language this country speaks. But how do I know that I've drawn an appropriate line? Arguably, my refusal to convert to Christianity means that I have made my interactions with fellow citizens more complicated. I know that all the Jews who don't work on the Sabbath definitely put stumbling blocks in the way of scheduling things (though it tends to affect them more than it affects others). I see a big difference between the two, but maybe I have just as much a responsibility to learn Spanish, as Spanish-speakers are an ever-growing demographic, as the recent waves of immigrants from South America have to learn English, or at the very least to make sure that my children learn it (which I'm sort of dedicated to anyway). I'm not opposed to it, but I chose French in middle and high school, and Hebrew and Gaelic are higher on the list of languages-I-want-to-learn; maybe I shouldn't have the option of not learning Spanish ASAP. Or maybe I shouldn't question the fact that sometimes I have to suck it up that people will serve me bread during Passover.

So maybe it isn't the responsibility of the ethnic majority/plurality to adapt to the needs of the minority. But ask yourself, if someone planned a meeting or gave you homework on Christmas, how would you feel about that?

Hmm, I seem to be writing ever-longer sentences in this blog. I promise I'll avoid that in the future.

And if you're wondering about the title, I'm referring to Greendays "I Wanna Be the Minority."

Humanization

So as I mentioned in the previous post, I was at a round table for English professors and students yesterday and we got to talking about "why are we here?" with here being the English department. And I made my typical little speech and even got a "wow" from Professor Mack, our resident Shakespeare authority. I wish I had thought to introduce myself when I said it. Oh well. At any rate, here is my (extended) rant on why the world needs arts and humanities majors:

I don't think that as English majors, or any other ARHU majors, that we need to feel guilty about our choice of study. We need the humanities for exactly that reason: they humanize us. If we only pursue those fields which seem to us to have obvious utilitarian goals, such computer science, engineering, or even medicine, we lose our souls, our spirits, that which makes us special among animals. If we think only in terms of how the search for knowledge will help us to live a more physically comfortable life, then we stop being human. I don't say this out of derision of animals, since anyone who knows me knows that I love them better than most people, but they are not human. They do not have our capacity to make change, and therefore they do not have our need for self-reflection.

The truth is that practical science has betrayed us. The first major technological revolution was agriculture, and soon after civilization developed nutritional and social problems that never existed for us as hunter-gatherers. We became a drain on our own resources and started to look for ways to take other communities' resources. In a more modern sense, we are still being betrayed. Our means of getting more food faster has made many of obese, leading to issues ranging from low-energy to deadly diabetes. Not to mention that many of our processed foods are carcinogenic.

Beyond that, our planet is quite literally melting. And our greater technologies have more than anything given us greater power to bring death to our fellow man. And the people who are only concerned with the most efficient, the cheapest, the fastest, are the ones who are leading the way to destruction.

And even if people don't die, their cultures often do. We are losing the beauty of diversity to the diseases of globalism, capitalism, homegenization and the sirens of celebrity, consumerism, technology.

I do not mean to say that we should cease to study chemisty, economics, biotechnology. But rather that we need the humanities as check, a balance. It seems that the increase of our tools has led to a decrease in our morals. And it is up to the artists, the humanists to cast the light on our excesses and our cruelties and to force us to look at what we, as humans, have become.

Today, quite by accident, I stumbled upon a quotation that beautifully expresses this: "Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened,"
Madame de Stael, "The Influence of Literature upon Society"

So, now you know why I don't feel the least bit self-indulgent being an English and History major.

An introduction. . .

Today I was at round-table discussion called "Life After Life" which was about why we become English majors. And the once again I found myself not able to talk as much as I would like about the various issues that come up in day-to-day life. People just don't appreciate that listening to my opinions is time well-spent. Or not. But now I can rant, rave, and babble to my heart's content and direct all my friends to my musings, thereby only spewing them the one time.

As for the name. . . Aine is Irish and Bina is Hebrew, and both translate roughly as wisdom, intelligence, wit, etc. I'm honored to be Jewish, but I think I was Celtic in a past life. Or if you can't take that seriously, I am compelled by Celtic culture and a lot of people seem to think I look Irish.

The Sacred Apple Orchard has to do with mystic. . . stuff. I used it more because l like the sound of it than that I have any true expertise about what it signifies. Look it up. Don't make fun of me if you find out it's stupid.