For whatever reasons, some subset of the American population continues to dwell on profanity as if it were something worthy of paying anything more than the slightest degree of attention to. On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission spent the morning making its case to the Supreme Court that it has the authority to levy fines against FOX and the other major networks for instances in which people curse on live TV. The case had previously been thrown out by the Federal Appeals Court in New York, but the FCC has persisted, elevating its case to the highest court in the nation.

The arguments as to why the War on Words is ridiculous have all been said and done, from the late George Carlin to the life’s work of Alan Abel. What’s funny is that people are now seemingly losing interest and the FCC’s crusade appears to be compensatory, a desperate plea for its own existence. A recent example of absent-minded spontaneous swearing occurred during the Philadelphia Phillies’ World Series victory parade last week, when the team’s All-Star second baseman, Chase Utley, pumped his fists in the air and proclaimed the Phillies, “World Fucking Champions!” Utley’s profane utterance echoes similar incidents involving Cher, Dick Cheney and Bono.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the nonevent seems to echo the reaction that I imagine the majority of the public shares at this point:

After proclaiming "World champions!" at the Phillies' celebration at Citizens Bank Park, the smiling second baseman leaned into the microphone and inserted a familiar two-syllable profanity between "world" and "champions."

The crowd loved it, erupting into cheers for several minutes. Local TV and radio stations covering the event live, however, were less amused.

Utley's utterance was heard on all of them, and the Federal Communications Commission doesn't take kindly to cursing…

Fans at Citizens Bank Park generally were unfazed.

"They hear worse stuff in school," said Ivette Centeno, 44, of Northeast Philadelphia, there with her two children and two grandchildren. "As a parent, we can explain that it was just excitement, and that we don't want them to say that."

Malik Muhammad, 29, of West Philadelphia, there with his daughter, Tia, 6, and Tia's mother, Tamika Taylor, 28, called the remark "surprising, but I can't say it disturbed us…”

"I thought it was awesome," Steve Reinhardt said. "It got the loudest applause of the day."

Reading Between the Lines: and languages Soon after I arrived in the Dover Tzahal unit of the IDF, I began browsing the army's online historical archives. The Dover Tzahal is the Spokesperson Unit, essentially responsible for army PR. One of Dover Tzahal’s responsibilities is to maintain the IDF website, which is written in both English and Hebrew, features news updates and cutesy human interest stories, and a reliable weekly declaration that we will protect the State of Israel, given by Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi. With a bit of browsing, you’ll also find that the IDF has historical archives, which are basically summaries of historical events that have taken place since just before Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948.

As a native English speaker who is also proficient in Hebrew, I was wide-eyed with both shock and disgust as I began to explore what struck me as an historically inaccurate, grammatically incorrect massacre of supposed facts. The archives weren’t manipulative or skewed in one way or another; they simply didn’t make sense. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that this mess was a result of translations by native English speakers who lacked sufficient historic knowledge and Hebrew language skills. They had been forced to translate the archives from Hebrew to English within a couple of days, an order that was given by (what I’m generous in calling) an incompetent officer that, thankfully, is no longer anywhere to be found in Dover Tzahal.  With my sincere interest in history, the written word, and the historical and political image of Israel, I requested the responsibility of editing the archives. Since then, the task has been officially delegated to me just as I’d so desperately wanted—and yet, I feel cursed.

I’ve spent the last several years of my life playing catch-up after being raised in an assimilated family and having attended public schools that glossed over the history of the Middle East and Israel, in particular. At this point, I consider myself to be more than generally knowledgeable about the topics of Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli history along with contemporary affairs, and so I’d simply assumed that editing the historical archives would be somewhat effortless and maybe even fun. I was wrong.

My difficulties are completely unrelated to historical accuracy; I can easily read one paragraph at a time and alter what is not correct, verify facts with credible sources and make certain that the information is solid. The major issue, which impedes the process most of the time, is word choice. For example, there are no generally accepted definitions of a terrorist, a Palestinian, a defensive operation, a massacre, an arrest, or any other term that is essential in describing Israel’s past. I’d become accustomed to using these words in a way that coincided with my understanding of these loaded terms and phrases. Now, however, I’m not speaking for myself, my education, my personal bibliography, or my group of likeminded friends—I am speaking for the IDF, and thus, in some ways, I am speaking for Israel.

Israel critics would have difficulty finding historical inaccuracies or biased terms in the IDF historical archives that are written in Hebrew. That said, the country also needs to express its political actions and ideals as fairly and articulately as possible in English—its second language. For example, in Hebrew, the word piguah refers to an attack. It does not strictly refer to acts of terrorism, but most English-speaking immigrants in this country—the ones that do all of the translating for the IDF—only hear this word in that particular context. If there was a piguah, in all likelihood, a suicide bomber has attacked. Linguistically, however, the word could refer to any type of attack, even a justified counter-attack, and certainly any number of attacks that are not politically motivated. It isn't easy to find translators whose understanding of the cultural and linguistic connotations of the sensitive words used to describe Israel’s “official stance" is deep enough to be published and disseminated, especially considering that they are the very translations taught in classrooms, aired on the news, and influencing voters and policy makers, everywhere.

Most people don’t have a reason to read the IDF website, especially when it comes to the online historical archives. That thought in particular has reduced some of the stress associated with editing the archives, but my general understanding of both the fate of all that is written and the ideological conflict that surrounds the State of Israel, regardless of what it or its supporters do, makes this endeavor nearly impossible. My understanding is that even if the overwhelming majority of people rely on other news sources, books, academic journals, and credible professors for their information, one thing is certain: those looking at the IDF with negative, preconceived notions about our military history and our interpretation of it will read the IDF historical archives, and they will, however unfairly, use our website to conjure up arguments that could falsely represent the position of the IDF and thus fuel the opposition in the ideological war that Israel is, and always has been, fighting.

I know that the IDF archives are misleading due to bad translations, but to most others, they are simply a representation of the IDF and its official stance regarding controversial, historical events. In Israel, we do not have the luxury of overlooking typographical errors, misquotes, or numerical mishaps. Everything associated with this country—every military operation, every sentence written in any publication, the general justification of our existence—is scrutinized in an aggressive way that no other sovereign state has had to contend with.

I see no need to embellish or to leave any portion of our narrative untold, but it's a challenge to make certain that the language coincides with the truth, both in the context of the archives and out of context. For now, I’ll continue to research both Israeli policy and international law in order to best define some of these terms. I'll strive to choose words that speak the completest truth possible, and that serve to further the understanding of our people’s national experiment.

In the global discussion about Islam, words matter. The US government apparentlyThe Artists Formerly Known As Jihadists agrees, and has begun a review of some of the words that it had been using since 2001. The AP reports that "Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as 'jihadists' or 'mujahedeen.'" Bad news for fans of "Islamo-fascism": that's out, too.

According to the AP, the government has caught on to the fact that particular inflammatory terms "may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates."

The decision seems to be a recognition and affirmation of the position on language of CENTCOM General Abizaid, who must have acquired his appreciation of how language affects diplomacy and relationships with Muslims during his time in Iraq. At a CSIS event last September, Abizaid said:

I mean, even adding the word Islamic extremism, or qualifying it to Sunni Islamic extremism, or qualifying it further to Sunni Islamic extermism as exemplified by government such as Bin Laden, all make it very, very difficult because the battle of words is meaningful, especially in the Middle East to people...[snip]...

The key is to figure out how we don't turn this into Samuel Huntington's Battle of Civilization's and we work toward an area where we respect mainstream Islam. There's nothing Islamic about Bin Laden's philosophy, there's nothing Islamic about suicide bombing. I believe that these are huge difficulties that we need to overcome, this notion of Christianity versus Islam. It's not that, it doesn't need to be that.

Abizaid is right, and so, in this case, is the Bush administration, whose decision is sound both politically and intellectually. It will go a long way towards warming up many of the Muslim moderates --- even many in the US --- who felt that the odd experiments with purposefully controversial language that the Bush administration was engaged in were detrimental to any foreign policy not aiming at antagonizing Muslims pointlessly.

It seems absurd on its face that for so long our government, which ostensibly seeks to advance a more secular worldview in the middle East, would have purposefully advanced terms that were chosen by and utilized by extreme religious fanatics. Ownership of language --- what lawyers and PR people call "framing the issue" --- is very important in adversarial confrontations about information (which the war on terrorism certainly is). With this decision the Bush administration is opening up the possibility of the US government devising a lexicon that allows it to evaluate terrorism, religious fanaticism, and Muslim violence on its own terms.

When the government plays fast and loose with language, the political ramifications can be severe, so the news that the Bush administration is finally adopting responsible linguistic principles guided by attention to the actual outcomes of policy, as opposed to various kinds of oneupsmanship in sanctimony, is welcome.

Having said that, we, average people, are not the government, and we ought to resist the impulse to standardize or check our use of language. Certainly we should try to employ language as accurately as possible and attend to important distinctions --- for example, that between political theocrats and violent theocrats. By the same token, we should be clear in our definitions, avoid unnecessary hyperbole, and do our best not to use language illogically or ahistorically. But it would be futile to hope for a single lingua franca in discussions of terrorism, and would do little good to have one in the first place.

The fact is that the term "jihadism" has become part of the English language, just like "fatwa," "intifada," and "ayatollah." The term "Al-Qaeda" will always be associated with a conspiratorial movement engaged in violence, the same way we associate certain collectivist criminal characteristics with the Sicilian word "mafia." For the average Joe, these terms are useful means of conveying ideas, which is good enough reason to keep them around.

Perhaps most importantly of all, we should be vigilant in not allowing the government to dictate what is and is not acceptable when it comes to words. The fact that the world of 1984 and Newspeak is remote from our own isn't reason to ignore its warnings. Expressions like "un-good" and "double plus un-good" might seem unlikely to take purchase any time soon, but there is a long history of governmental and military euphemisms crowding out and eventually replacing equivalent, vivid ordinary language expressions, with the ultimate effect of making it far more difficult to talk about matters of war and peace, life and death, except in an abstract manner far removed from any actual lived experience.

Hence, at the same time we recognize that tactical and strategic imperatives obligate a responsible government to be judicious and frequently euphemistic in its use of language, that obligation on the part of the government clearly underscores our own obligation to defend and maintain our ordinary language, in all its varieties, vagaries, and vividness. A certain amount of vagueness, anachronism, regional variation, and even confusion, in addition to being a token of the health of a language, is also a vital bulwark against authoritarian politics.

The Franklin BDS-1860: The Dictionary of the Beast I am not making this up.

For my German language courses I purchased a Franklin Deutsch/English Professor PRO BDS-1860. As one of its many functions that include Tic Tac Toe, the game Conjumania (possibly a cross between naked Twister and Jumangi), and cultural notes on items such as Britpop ("Oasis, Travis und Blur"), my electronic dictionary offers up handy words to know when you turn it on.

Now remember that this is the German version of the dictionary. It's not meant to be purchased by English speakers, and they do their best to dissuade us using it by putting the Z key wackily in the middle of the keyboard. I spent hours trying to find the Y so I could translate "I have been sitting here looking at your stupid keyboard all day looking for the 'y'." So when it gives me words to learn, I can only assume it doesn't know my President is George W. Bush.

Here then are a sampling of what my dictionary wants me to know. And again, I am not making this up. If you want, get your own BDS-1860 or just come by and borrow mine. Just be aware that they know I have it now and may be watching.

Again, I am really not making this up.

BDS-1860	Me
Unbroken. "To date the peace treaty remains unbroken."	Clearly, not a good start.
My name is Dieter, excuse me?	Whoa! Are you listening to me?
Special. "Linda is my special friend."	This is just getting weird now.
Hurt. "One more drink won't hurt."	For who? Me or you Mata Hari? I won't tell you anything more than my name, rank, and Halo 3 save code.
Regierung	Oh, a German word. What's it mean? "To take power," that's what.
Transmit. "to transmit cholera"	And how often does this come up in conversation?
Schutz. "Protection from infection. To protect the eyes."	Have they been watching Bones? I swear I saw this last season.
Raid. "A raid on Belgrade/London"	At least where know where to schutz our eyes.
Scheffen. "We've got to get to the border."	No surprisingly, even in their dictionary, they are not expecting to beat U.S.A.
Excused. "Many of the war criminals were excused of their crimes."	Nice hoping there Dieter. But don't bet on it. U.s.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. Ah, who am I kidding. That's really really @#$% up.

Fruit: In German a little squeeze can turn Gretel into Hansel
As part of my trying to figure out where I come from and why my mother thought herring in tomato sauce was suitable for a 3rd grader's lunch box, I recently retried taking German lessons at NYU. I had failed miserably at it in high school ("You mean I have to memorize all this stuff?") and again in college ("You mean I have to memorize all this stuff?") and again when I went to Germany ("Ich weiss nicht was Sie sagen." I have not memorized any stuff.)

The first day of these things is always awkward as we go around the room explaining why we'd like to learn to recast the world into the stark light of male, female and neuter.

"My fiance is German."

"My fiance is German."

"You people tried to kill my family."

After that, well, the class actually wasn't too bad. With my 5 previous years of instruction I had tested easily into level 3 out of 10 available classes. ("You have a good sense of the nouns, but do not seem to have memorized any verbs.") Being the optimist I am, I chose level 2.

I was easily the best student, and could sit back and enjoy the struggles of the woman who spoke Korean, English, French, but stumbled over "Potzdamer Platz." Ha! I am so much way smarter, even if I can only speak English and kindergarten German. At least I can say "Kindergarten." (Which is masculine, of course, even though the children are, technically neuter, except for a group of boys, which is feminine, naturally, or girls, who are always neuter until they are ladies and been around the block a few times.)

Here are some useful hints for knowing what gender objects are in German.

• Fruit, such as oranges, grapes, cherries, and lemons are female, except for apples, which are male, because, apparently, they killed Snow White. However, when squeezed into juice, they all turn male. Apparently the German's believe a little pressure can go a long way.
• Your eyes, ears, hair and eyebrows are feminine, even your lips are ladies, but your mouth and throat are male. Think about that the next time you lick your lips, or anyone else's for that matter.

In my next post, I will show you how not to stick words together in German if you are trying to avoid explaining how you spent the day misusing Canadian hats.

Just a Short Drive to Cocksucker, Germany

Nothing Worse: Than an insult you don't understandOkay, so if you don't read the blather in our Faithhacker comment boxes, you might not know that there's been a bit of a brouhaha going on of late.  If this is the case, I congradulate you on your focus, and wish you well.  I'm not even going to link to such silliness here. 

Focused reader, I suggest you continue on with your day.

However, if you HAVE been following those threads, you might (like me) be a little confused by some of the terminology getting thrown around by our more observant Jewcy readers.  And Faithhacker feels strongly that defining our terms as we proceed is one MAJOR way we can help to bridge the gap between people with different bases of knowledge. 

A huge part of what scares many of us away from Jewish content is simply a lack of comfort with Jewish vocabulary, so I urge that in future you might, if you comment, link or define your terms...  so you can teach us something.

After all... just because we get a little hot under the collar doesn't mean we can't grow at the same time.  You know, there's that handy line:  

"Who is wise? 
One who learns from every man..."

And in that spirit, I want to try to mend and ease out of the furious comments... by learning from them.  I thought I'd do what I could to translate and explain the comment-box terminology, and I hope people will correct me, as my google-studies and context-clue definitions are sure to be inadequate.

shomer mitzvot: this just means people who observe all the commandments, like keeping the sabbath, and eating kosher, and being modest, and so on...   "I'd love to come to Talladega with you on Saturday, but I'm Shomer Mitzvot!"

HaShem:  Is one of the many ways we avoid saying the name of God.  If you grew up Reform, you're used to "Adonai" but you probably didn't hear "HaShem" much.    Literally it means "The Name."  "The farm is suffering from lack of rain, but it's going to storm tonight, Thanks to HaShem!"

hillul  HaShem:  Well, now we know HaShem, right?  So since Hillul means a kind of absence, then Hillul Hashem means all the things you do that hide God's presence.  I also find a bunch of places that define this one as "desecration of God's name.  But truthfully, I don't fully understand it. Can anyone help me out?

kahal:  This word means "community" but I'm not sure how specific a definition it has to have.  It seems it can refer to a congregation, a Jewish population, etc.  But maybe you can use it more loosely too.  "On Sesame Street, the Kahal of puppets boycotted Maria's fixit shop."  Can I say that?

atid lavo:  This one refers to the messianic age, the time to come.  "I'm going to eat bon bons all day long in Atid Lavo." 

averos: Is plural  for avera, which is the most commonly used Hebrew word meaning "sins".  "So I ate the last piece of pie!  Chill out, it's not an avera or anything..."

sinas chinam:  Everyone seems to agree that this phrase means "baseless hatred."  "I don't know why I feel the way I do about Avril Lavigne.  I guess it's just sinas chinam."

New moon yesterday. Auspicious time to start something new. Plant seeds. (Also wreaks havoc on moods - moon/mood not much difference!)

But this new moon had slipped my mind because sometimes I don't look at the actual calendar, a sad by-product of my mac calendar widget. So I was thrilled that I had "coincidentally" added a new element to my practice on the new moon. Maybe all this "tuning in" is actually starting to work.

What I added into my practice is a new mantra. One with the ability to "remove all negativity"!

Now it's not that I'm so negative. (Although notice I used not negative, instead of pretty positive.) This haiku from my book "Did I Wake You?" says it in a nutshell:

"You're so negative
for a positive person," he said.
"No, I'm not!"

I feel like my negativity is a kind of psychic "last ten pounds". Yes I can live with it, but I'd rather not. And I worry about being negative because worry is my favorite kind of negativity. Of course worrying about my negativity just creates more negativity. And the kabbalah says that worry is the devil. But what is worry? Worry is an inner monolouge that goes "maybe not, no, I don't think, shouldn't have, what if I don't, not sure, what if this is no good, what if something bad happens, no good can come of this..."

But what can I can I do to stop it? I tried telling myself 'don't be negative!' But it didn't work. It never works when you tell yourself not to do something. Your brain only hears the something. Not the don't. 'Don't eat!' Sounds like, 'Eat!' That's why sometimes when you go on a diet you gain weight. At least that's what I tell myself.

You can't even tell yourself not to tell yourself not to do things. You have to do something else so that there is not room in the time/space continuum for the thing you don't want to do. You can't just not be afraid, you have to love more, etc.

So when I came across the CD with a mantra to remove all negativity I ordered it immediatly. (Mantra, by the way, comes from man=mind and tra=tool, so mind tool, instrument of thought!)

It arrived on Friday. I was on the road all weekend and last night I came home, took it out and did it and I do not have one negative thing to say about it! It is fantastic!

Here was the first transformation that happened.

All weekend I had been seeing a billboard for some new car, maybe the Element, which asked: DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK PHAT? I had so much negativity around that billboard. "That's so hacky, that's so old, what a waste of a pun, I hate cars, why do we have to have billborads they are so horrible, but it's also kind of clever. Why do clever people have to be in advertising..." This train of thought didn't take much time. It happened instantaneously. And it didn't linger but there it was, repeatedly. All weekend, despite the fact that I try not to pay attention to billboards because I feel when I 'pay attention" I am actually paying. And retail at that!

And then I get home and I put in the CD that is going to help me chant to remove all negativity. And what is the first line? "Om Kem Kam PHAT!" Capitals, and exclamation point, his! The word Phat appears three times in this chant which is altogther sixteen words. One fifth of the words in this chant to remove negativity is a word that I have been feeling negative about all weekend!

So of course I am desperate to know the translation of the word. It is not clear from Sri Siva's explanation. He tells the general meaning. Explains that these seed sounds have "nuclear power" (yikes!) to destroy negativity. So I go on line and look it up in an online sanskrit dictionary and find that PHAT! is "a mystical syllable used in incantation"!

Which is kind of the same meaning as Phat has here. Wow, cool, beyond words. A mystical syllable used in rap (incantation). Which kind of blew my mind. The connections between cultures, between us as individuals. Seperation is such an illusion, the ultimate negative idea, and I'm so over it!

***

Related in Jewcy: Allow us to introduce Beth, this week's Faithhacker guest blogger.

Hear ye, Jewcy people!

According to the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, the word "themself" is a "substandHarold Bloom: Careful never to use word "themself"ard pronoun," is "limited to limited to Vulgar English speech or imitations of it," is an "unfortunate result of trying to avoid [sexist speech]." As if that doesn't make their position clear enough, they also say that it is a shibboleth...in other words, if we use the word "themself," this will out us as irredeemably trashy in the eyes of people who know how to speak properly.

Jewcy needs to take a stand on this. We need to embrace themself as the only possible third person singular reflexive pronoun for the 21 century. The stakes are much higher than they appear at first glance: there are all sorts of big issues coming to a head in the battle over this word. Should we force English into service as a therapeutic tool to address our upper middle-class anxieties about being indistinguishable from the riff-raff? No. Should we have an apopleptic fit when people use gender-indeterminate terms to describe people who are, well, of undetermined gender? No.

Enough of this nonsense. My name is Joey, and I'm reporting for duty! Let's get it on, you detestable language and gender reactionaries. Themself themself themself!