Let's Call a Spade a Club

On language theft and sleights of hand

Do you believe in vampires? I do.

See, whenever I pass a puppy, I say "look - a vampire!" I've decided to refer to puppies as vampires, ergo, vampires are real. Don’t let any closed-minded zoologists insist that vampires are mythical nonexistent creatures. Why, with my own eyes I've seen six already today, and it's only noon!

This may seem like a silly exercise to you, but mountains of ostensibly serious arguments have been made by using the same tactic. The trick is called language theft - to arbitrarily assign terminology that carries certain connotations, in order to force through one's favored assumptions without ever having to justify them. What's more amazing, this can go on for years without ever being called out for what it is.

Say for example you disagree with a certain school rule. No, I don't mean if you're a parent or student actually affected by the rule; for our example let's say you live 6000 miles away and know absolutely nothing about the school or its dynamics other than the fact that someone told you that a) the school exists, and b) they have a certain rule.

Now most people would consider it a bit, eh, weird for a fifty-year-old man to take the time to write an article kvetching about the internal policy decisions of a girl's elementary school on a different continent, the background of which he is entirely ignorant. No worries - we just change the word 'school rule' to 'ban'; hey presto this becomes serious social commentary, worthy of a huge huckster headline and an admission fee for the privilege to read all about it (for those who have better things to do with their money, see here for a free synopsis).

And there you have the method. School rules are pretty humdrum things, sometimes important, sometimes a bit over the top, and sometimes the result of on the ground circumstances that the administration is under no requirement to explain to random museum curators with too much time on their hands. "Bans", on the other hand - oh those are archaic suppressive mechanisms, serious breaches in individual autonomy, coercive social manipulation, and - who knows - may even be enforced through violence. Call a school rule a ban, and all these delicious associations are magically applied.

(For more on the blogosphere's chronic misappropriation of the word ban, see here)

Or maybe you have a bee in your bonnet about some other community's vigilance in the area of refined behavior. Now, coming out against "tzniyus" may be a hard sell, given its millennia long history as a highly emphasized critical Jewish value, the tragic failure of feminist-influenced communities to uphold any decent level of purity, and the comparatively miraculous successes of those frum groups who focus strongly on maintaining a high level of modesty.  Out comes the handy thesaurus, and instead of ‘tzniyus’ we insert ‘objectification’. What that means is anybody's guess, but it certainly doesn't have the same ring as ‘refined behavior’. Point scored, chareidim are nuts.

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Word piracy plays a role in some more consequential assertions as well. Activists of all stripes are well aware of this, and use it to their advantage all the time. Say you support the wanton destruction of fetuses at will. You might accurately call yourself pro-abortion, seeing that that actually describes your leanings; you are, after all, pro-abortion. But that would leave you in a position of having to explain your moral philosophy of when life begins and at what point murder is not murder and what makes you believe so and all sorts of similar complications. Far easier is to simply assume the title ‘pro-choice’; who can argue against the individual's right to make decisions? 

Of course, just about everybody is ok with choice when the choices in question aren't morally reprehensible. And everybody is anti-choice when they are. (Drive the speed limit, or weave through traffic doing 95 - "honest, officer, I was just exercising my right to choose…") The question is which category this falls into; a question which is neatly sidestepped by a self-assigned title based on arbitrary word allocation.

Jewish intellectual activists latch on to this tool as well. Let's imagine a philosophical school that takes as its premise that things should be interpreted in the most 'natural' light available. So, for example, any indication of the supernatural in the literature or traditions are downplayed to whatever extent possible. Religious philosophy and the effects of mitzvah observance are explained in as mundane terms as can be found. And of course, no hashgacha or guiding hand is assumed in mesoras haTorah; halachic practice and hashkafic consensus are analyzed as a result of random historical and societal potluck.

Every self-respecting movement needs a name. So how would you suggest proponents of this school of thought title themselves? Naturalists, perhaps? Maybe 'Minimalists' (as in minimal G-dly intervention) would capture it? Well, the name they choose for themselves is 'Rationalists'.

Curious. The word 'rational' happens to have a dictionary definition - something along the lines of sensible or reasonable or logic based. Why would that define this group over those who believe that, say, it's reasonable and logical to assume that Hashem does indeed guide His Torah through history in a way He wills it to be learned and practiced? After all, His hands-on preservation of Klal Yisroel through the vicissitudes of galus is quite apparent, and He does indeed care much about the Torah and provides us with Gedolim to guard it and pass it on, so it seems perfectly reasonable and logical to conclude that there's a large degree of intrinsic significance to the mesorah as well. And given that mitzvos and Talmud Torah are points of connection with the ratzon of the Infinite Deity, it seems rather sensible and reasonable to assume that they'd have deep metaphysical significance far beyond some base utilitarian functions. We can argue the points and the nuances of their application, but it seems rather presumptuous for one point of view to lay claim to the term 'rational' as a defining title.

Likewise with assumptions about the supernatural. Assuming we all believe that Hashem is infinite and not bound to any natural laws, the question of how prevalent supernatural events are or were becomes a very technical question of interpretation. We can all Google up sources who favor one way or the other, and argue over the philosophical underpinnings of each approach, but why pray tell does one opinion qualify as more intrinsically 'Rational' than the other?

Oh of course, we're being annoyingly pedantic. 'Rationalism' here doesn't mean the dictionary definition; it's just a handy name chosen at random. It's not their fault people are stuck on old, embedded term definitions and naturally associate them, no subterfuge meant at all.

In that spirit, I'm thinking to found my own school of philosophy. It takes as a premise the authority of Gedolei Torah of each generation, the assumptions of validity to mesorah in questions of ideology ("psak in hashkafa" if you will), and an ideal of full time Torah study (in an internally focused, not academic, manner). And just to choose a randomly selected name for my approach, let's see, I guess we'll go with "Intelligentism".

Of course, people like Natan Slifkin and Marc Shapiro and their followers don't buy into my ideas, which is ok. After all, philosophically, they are not Intelligent.