Imaginary tales and so forth

[roga]

My mom just forwarded me a column by Meir Shalev which I liked, and so I'm posting here. It really reminded me of this post marag linked to a few days ago: Why Religion is Like Fanfic.

And to use marag's disclaimer - both articles should not be clicked if you're easily offended by religion.

Note: Yated Ne'eman is an Lithuanian haredi daily newspaper (

Comments

[marag]

Oh man, that's *awesome*. I love it!

[roga]

Thought you would... :-)

[npkedit]

Well, as someone who's obviously religious, I can say this: I find both articles offensive and ill-considered.

[marag]

::shrug:: Well, you probably shouldn't have read them. They were fairly obviously going to be anti-religious :D (Especially if one was something I'd posted!)

Personally, I found both articles insightful and on-target. ::shrug::

[npkedit]

Actually, I was talking about the anti-religious one and the stupid Harry Potter article out of Yated Ne'eman (because frum newspapers don't have things better to talk about). But I don't not read things because I might find them offensive (well...not from a philosophical perspective anyway). It's always good to know what the crazies *wink* are thinking.

[roga]

That is always true :-)

I'm sorry this offended you, in any case. Meir Shalev is very harsh here with the haredim, but I took it as, in this case, a response to the Yated Neeman article and not much more, and even though I do agree with much of what he's saying, I wouldn't have said it as provocatively as he does. Which is why he gets a weekly column in Haaretz and I don't.

If you don't mind my asking, how do you feel about different sects of Orthodox Judaism? I don't mean each and every one, but... do you feel closer to some that to others? Do you feel the difference between Orthodox Jews who are similar to you but live in Israel, vs. the ones in your community in the US? Do you feel like certain sects are simply nutjobs who give other Jews a bad name?

[mecurtin]

I have to friend you now.

[roga]

Ha, glad you liked this :-)

[mecurtin]

What are the connotations of the Hebrew words translated as "lethal review"?

[roga]

That was one phrase I really had trouble translating, because I couldn't remember the English equivalent of a very bad critical review. I considered 'killer' or 'slamming', but wasn't sure if those were necessarily negative, because after all you have 'killer outfit' and "you look slammin'". Lethal is the literal translation, but as a verb and in the context of the article, it means 'they slammed into them'.

What English phrase would you have used? It does feel wrong to me, I'll be glad to edit.

[mecurtin]

"scathing" is the usual word for that sort of literary review, though one also often sees something like, "Yated Ne'eman slammed HP in their review, saying .."

[mecurtin]

PS the different connotations are: "scathing" implies a critique that is both somewhat formal or logical *and* which the speaker agrees with. "slammed" can be either justified or unjustified, and is probably the word you want, in this case.