http://community.nytimes.com/comments/india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/being-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-tone/?sort=oldest&offset=2
New York Times
Comment #27
Ethical Democracy
New York
September 25th, 2011
1:50 am
Beauty & Inferiority
India is a vast crowded complex space where numerous, seemingly conflicting stereotypes (and ideals) persist.
That's Democracy -- thirty-one centuries in the making. Give or take a few.
Where else would you have Fair and Lovely makeup, side by side with celebrating the birthday, as a national holiday, of Krishna the dark blue God of Love?
I'm an atheist, don't use beauty products, just juxtaposing contrastive ideals by way of illustration.
The author (see her article below) claims and I quote \"Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.\"
Really? Even Aretha Franklin and more recently, Beyonce pretty much went blond, or do you think their hair color and skin tone are a happy accident? To uphold the US, the epicenter of racist ideology of Whiteness, is just plain ignorant and a gross distortion of racialized discourse in the US.
And, yikes, have you never heard of the racialization of the Black Irish?
Yes, they have white skin. But black hair! A Black Irish woman at London's Heathrow airport was detained, (she claimed to me), because she was Black Irish. That was in the mid-1980's, so, way before Islamist hysteria following 9/11.
People use many strategies for constructing The Other.
Suck it up , Suryatapa, you really speak from class privilege and therefore Power (dark brown though you may be), so stop being superficial, focus instead on maternal and child malnutrition in your writings, make fewer blow-dry (you have a hair problem too?) visits to the beauty salon (most Indians, including me, and I live in New York, have never been inside one) get over it, live your own life, think your own thoughts be receptive to disparate perceptions, misguided though some obviously are, be HUMYN and don't blame it on India and Indians.
Please don't let your next article be about the big boobs of Indian goddesses and how inadequate that makes you feel!
Take responsibility for constructing your own mindset.
It's not that you \"do not compute.\" You cant compute.
Or rather, you choose not to.
Harsh -- but sometimes truths are inconvenient.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=======================================
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/being-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-tone/?hp#preview
The article follows:
New York Times copyright
Being Comfortable in Your Own Skin (Tone)
By SURYATAPA BHATTACHARYA
Suryatapa at the age of six in her childhood home in Siliguri, West Bengal.
I am Indian – but after more than 15 years of living abroad, some aspects of Indian life feel fresh, if not new or altogether welcome.
Three months ago, I wandered into a salon in Kolkata with my mother and came face-to-face with a prejudice I hadn’t had to deal with in all the years abroad.
The beautician insisted she could remove my “deep tan.”
But my dark skin was not the result of a tanning bed disaster – I was born with it.
Lady with pink talons and bright pink lipstick: I can lighten you up by several shades.
Me: No.
Lady: You are roaming in the sun too much.
Me: Don’t touch my face.
No one in India seems to think it unusual to try to slap some bleach, or a herbal equivalent, on my skin to reveal a whiter me. It is mildly irritating when it comes from my beloved aunts, and maddening when strangers suggest my dark skin is something to be “fixed.”
Being dark made me feel self-conscious.
As a kid I had several nicknames that stung. Darkie, Blackie and Kaalia (pinched from the title of a Bollywood film, about someone with dark skin). My color defined me and it stuck. A friend from school sent me a message on Facebook recently. It read: Kaalia, remember me? When I pointed out that it was insulting, I was called out for being “too sensitive.”
“We called you that with love,” he said. Like that should justify the hurt.
In Bengali, the word phorsha (fair) is used interchangeably with beautiful, and with family it was no different. Well-meaning aunts and their neighbors worried about my marriage prospects. Perhaps, they suggested, a little less sun exposure, or maybe a few extra layers of sandalwood paste or a homemade concoction that the neighborhood swore by?
But I was a problem child. You couldn’t drag me home from playing outside and even back then, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my face. The aunts sighed but never really gave up.
To be dark in India is not necessarily to be invisible. Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up. The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.
Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin. The matrimonial classifieds every weekend ask for or offer prospective brides who are never described as dark; at best (or worst) they are “wheatish.”
So it is no surprise that a multi-billion rupee market in fairness products thrives in India. Bollywood superstars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra are complicit in the act, appearing in airbrushed, whitened versions of themselves, urging you to pick up a tube or two of the latest product. From lotions and soaps to whitening underarm deodorant; every body part it seems is could be a few shades lighter.
In a moment of adolescent weakness, I too was convinced to go on a regimen of drinking milk with crushed turmeric. Urban legends abound of how turmeric and milk, with their blood cleansing properties, had turned someone’s friend’s sister into a fair maiden – so I gulped down this vile concoction, gagged and never touched it ever again.
As an adult I’ve become much more comfortable with the color of my skin.
Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.
So when I moved back to India, I was surprised and offended all over again, as I confronted people who still think porcelain skin is the epitome of beauty.
The last time I visited my parents in West Bengal, I paid a visit to the hairdresser. As I instructed the hairdresser on how to blow-dry my hair, the lady in the chair next to me seemed intrigued by my conversation. After several furtive glances she could no longer help herself and asked: “Do you do tanning?” I was dumbstruck and could barely stammer out a surprised “no.”
In retrospect, her assumption says a lot about how Indians equate skin tone with beauty, confidence and social standing. To her, my dark skin was incommensurate with me – a confident professional in a fancy salon.
I do not compute.
Suryatapa Bhattacharya is the India correspondent for “The National” newspaper.
======================================================================
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Advaita & Democracy: The One is the Other, the Other is the One
Advaita, the essential non-duality of Consciousness, is the great perceptual discovery of early thought, grounded in ordinary experience on the South Asian subcontinent.
Advaita is a discovery. It exists before it is found. Therefore Advaita is not an invention, or even a construction. It is an accessible perception of the Self as indivisible from the Other, potentially available to all.
To say that it is a perceptual discovery on the South Asian subcontinent, is not to say that that which is Advaita did not and could not exist elsewhere and everywhere.
Advaita could, did and does exist anywhere and everywhere, wherever the Self is receptive and contemplative, critical and rigorous.
Advaita is a state of Awe, before the insufficient but plausible appearance of Faith, before the sedimented formation of Belief.
In fact, Advaita is not a natural precursor of Faith or Belief.
Advaita is the cursor of Self as Other, Self as none other than Other.
Advaita is not at its core and in its essence, a religious or belief-based concept though Religion, Ideology and Belief are generally its garment. Advaita is and always will be appropriated by religion or ideology or belief to serve the ends of its hierarchies, designed by a few, whose objective, (frequently intentional or unintentional and therefore not necessarily intended to cause harm or cause it), is the exclusion of the Other, the many.
Advaita is reasoned, deliberative perception of Oneness, in a state of Awe.
Advaita is dynamic reasoning in a state of Awe.
Advaita in itself is Oneness, Advaita claims no Other.
To be receptive, contemplative, rigorous and critical is a universal human inclination. As is its indivisible, seamless Other -- to be prescriptive and coercive.
No force can limit, except temporarily, the inclination to be receptive, contemplative, critical, rigorous -- and their seamless opposites -- in living things.
None can claim advaita was the perceptual discovery of any one man or woman, in isolation from others.
Advaita can be called a collective representation, in the Durkheimian sense, of social Selves, to the Self.
Therefore experiences and thoughts about an nondual, indivisible, seamless Consciousness must belong to a collective entity, a shared sociality, that pondered and still does ponder, on Self and Selves, in contexts within and beyond the Universe.
This was earlier done in a time and space, when and where, the Self stood in direct relation to the observable natural world in which earth and universe could be seen to be indivisible and seamless.
To be in direct relation is to be present with no mediating objects and instruments between Self and Universe.
Where the forest existed but no garden.
Where nothing stood, nothing that was built, to obscure the view of Self active and perceptive,contemplative, rigorous and critical, within and Beyond Universe.
At the very core of Advaita is the naive, not primitive, concrete tangible observation that all beings share Breath -- the Breath Eternal.
This Breath has as its seamless Other, the ceasing of Breath and the beginning of the Mystery of Death.
Breath and Death were and are therefore One, inseparable from One (an)Other.
In the discovery of Advaita -- Nonduality -- are to be found the roots of democracy. How? Democracy's prerequisite is the perceptual, discoverable recognition of Nonduality -- that the One is the Other and the Other is the One.
Today is September 11, in the year 2011, a day as pertinent as any other, no more, no less, the assertion of the nonduality of Self and Other, living and dead, killers and killed, destroyers and destroyed.
Advaita is a discovery. It exists before it is found. Therefore Advaita is not an invention, or even a construction. It is an accessible perception of the Self as indivisible from the Other, potentially available to all.
To say that it is a perceptual discovery on the South Asian subcontinent, is not to say that that which is Advaita did not and could not exist elsewhere and everywhere.
Advaita could, did and does exist anywhere and everywhere, wherever the Self is receptive and contemplative, critical and rigorous.
Advaita is a state of Awe, before the insufficient but plausible appearance of Faith, before the sedimented formation of Belief.
In fact, Advaita is not a natural precursor of Faith or Belief.
Advaita is the cursor of Self as Other, Self as none other than Other.
Advaita is not at its core and in its essence, a religious or belief-based concept though Religion, Ideology and Belief are generally its garment. Advaita is and always will be appropriated by religion or ideology or belief to serve the ends of its hierarchies, designed by a few, whose objective, (frequently intentional or unintentional and therefore not necessarily intended to cause harm or cause it), is the exclusion of the Other, the many.
Advaita is reasoned, deliberative perception of Oneness, in a state of Awe.
Advaita is dynamic reasoning in a state of Awe.
Advaita in itself is Oneness, Advaita claims no Other.
To be receptive, contemplative, rigorous and critical is a universal human inclination. As is its indivisible, seamless Other -- to be prescriptive and coercive.
No force can limit, except temporarily, the inclination to be receptive, contemplative, critical, rigorous -- and their seamless opposites -- in living things.
None can claim advaita was the perceptual discovery of any one man or woman, in isolation from others.
Advaita can be called a collective representation, in the Durkheimian sense, of social Selves, to the Self.
Therefore experiences and thoughts about an nondual, indivisible, seamless Consciousness must belong to a collective entity, a shared sociality, that pondered and still does ponder, on Self and Selves, in contexts within and beyond the Universe.
This was earlier done in a time and space, when and where, the Self stood in direct relation to the observable natural world in which earth and universe could be seen to be indivisible and seamless.
To be in direct relation is to be present with no mediating objects and instruments between Self and Universe.
Where the forest existed but no garden.
Where nothing stood, nothing that was built, to obscure the view of Self active and perceptive,contemplative, rigorous and critical, within and Beyond Universe.
At the very core of Advaita is the naive, not primitive, concrete tangible observation that all beings share Breath -- the Breath Eternal.
This Breath has as its seamless Other, the ceasing of Breath and the beginning of the Mystery of Death.
Breath and Death were and are therefore One, inseparable from One (an)Other.
In the discovery of Advaita -- Nonduality -- are to be found the roots of democracy. How? Democracy's prerequisite is the perceptual, discoverable recognition of Nonduality -- that the One is the Other and the Other is the One.
Today is September 11, in the year 2011, a day as pertinent as any other, no more, no less, the assertion of the nonduality of Self and Other, living and dead, killers and killed, destroyers and destroyed.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Democracy, Diversity & The Public Sphere: Practising Citizenship in New York City
I am fortunate today, on my birthday no less, to actively participate in a lesson in Democracy, Diversity and how to participate in the Public Sphere, upon which the 2 D's mentioned here, are dependent.
I am taking a birthday run up to Fort Tryon in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan where I live. As I approach Fort Tryon Park I notice, aided by the dazzling spring sunlight, the thinnest line of clear picture or fishing wire strung up way, way above my head. I could easily have missed seeing it.
Flashback: Years ago I had happened to read about the practice by members of a certain Jews who "define" themselves as a community, by putting up such -- I am going to call them (note, this is my word, not theirs) -- 'encirclements'.
In any event, I approach a mini-truck carrying the NYC Parks Department decal on its door and I draw the driver's attention to the wire above. There are other persons in the Parks mini-truck.
I say "Can you see this wire?" At first they could not. So I say "Well if you step out you can see it really clearly." The driver steps out of the truck, while the other Parks employee accompanying him, leans out of her window and said "Oh yeah, now I see it."
I continue "I am not going to name the group that carries out this practice on a public road in a public area. I have nothing against this group and I have no reason to have anything against this or any other group. But I am pretty sure it is illegal for any person or group to string a wire above a public space to advance their own private beliefs."
The driver thinks a minute then says, "This is a diverse community. I am going to go right now to my supervisor and report it."
I say "NOW you get it." We hi-5.
[I'll add more to this blog entry when I find out more what happened as a result of this moment of ethical reckoning in the context of the diverse secular public sphere in a democracy].
Whether it is a woman in niqab driving on a public tax-paid road, or a group that strings wire on a public tax-paid road to indicate they are exclusive, the consequence is the same -- such acts are an unwarranted intrusion into the Public Sphere of participatory civil society in a diverse democracy.
We have no empirical evidence of any contemporary society, democratic or otherwise, from Rio to Riyadh that is not DIVERSE. Therefore it seems to me, public spaces cannot be constrained by exclusionary acts of persons and groups.
Happy Birthday to me. Today, I feel even more energized than I usually am.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
copyright owned by:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/In_the_Community/Eruv.shtml
Sharonne Cohen is an Israeli-Canadian writer, editor, translator, and teacher. She currently lives in Montreal.
---
Shabbat is a day set apart from all others, differentiating between the sacred (kodesh) and the mundane (hol), between the work week and the day designated for rest, family, and spirituality. On Shabbat all activities associated with work are prohibited, and according to traditional Jewish law include formal employment as well as traveling, spending money, and carrying items outside the home, in the public domain.
shabbat eruvThe prohibition against carrying includes house keys, prayer books, canes or walkers, and even children who cannot walk on their own. Recognizing the difficulties this rule imposes, the sages of the Talmud devised a way to allow for carrying in public without breaking the rule. Through this means, called an eruv, communities are able to turn a large area into one that is considered, for Jewish law purposes, a large private domain, in which items may be carried.
What It Is
The term eruv refers to the act of mixing or combining, and is shorthand for eruv hazerot--the mixing of domains, in this case, the private (rashut hayahid) and the public (rashut harabim). An eruv does not allow for carrying items otherwise prohibited by Jewish law on Shabbat, such as money or cell phones.
Having an eruv does not mean that a city or neighborhood is enclosed entirely by a wall. Rather, the eruv can be comprised of a series of pre-existing structures (walls, fences, electrical poles and wires) and/or structures created expressly for the eruv, often a wire mounted on poles. In practice, then, the eruv is a symbolic demarcation of the private sphere, one that communities come together to create.
To many people, the eruv sounds like a legal fiction, a way to circumvent the spirit and possibly letter of the law against carrying. To them, the eruv risks making the entire Jewish legal process seem absurd to non-Jews and non-observant Jews.
The talmudic Rabbis, however, were concerned with maintaining the integrity of the halakhic (Jewish legal) system while ensuring that the law is livable. Though the eruv makes use of a legal technicality, the fact that it is used--rather than allowing people to just carry anything, anywhere--is itself considered a form of respect for and submission to a legal system that is central and indispensable to traditionalist Jewish life.
The eruv helps enhance an aspect of Shabbat that the Rabbis considered vital-- "oneg Shabbat," the injunction to enjoy the Sabbath. With an eruv, Shabbat events are available to all families--young and old, mobile and less mobile--and individuals are able to carry house keys, reading glasses, or books outside their homes.
How It Works
Public domains are defined by Jewish law as non-residential areas, including streets, thoroughfares, plazas (open areas), and highways. Private domains are residential areas, and were originally referred to as homes surrounded by a wall, considered closed off from the surrounding public domains.
A designated space may be considered a private domain only when several conditions are met: It must cover an area of at least 12 square feet and must be somehow demarcated from its surroundings--either by a wall of some kind or by its actual topography (it must be all lower or all higher than its surroundings). If a space is frequented by more than 600,000 people each day it is considered too big to turn "private" with an eruv (which is why a large city like New York cannot have a single eruv constructed around it, though individual neighborhoods do). And an eruv cannot encompass two separate public spaces, so for instance, it may not cross over a river that cuts through town.
When eruvim (the plural of eruv) or parts of eruvim are constructed (as opposed to using pre-existing structures), they generally consist of a wire surrounding the designated area. The eruv, therefore, is unlikely to be noticed except by those looking for it, which fulfills a talmudic guideline that the eruvbe an integral part of the city, as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as possible.
Despite its symbolic nature, the eruv is intended to mimic in some way the form of walls, which need doorways--defined as two posts with a crossbeam over them, strong enough to withstand an ordinary wind. The eruv likewise needs openings, consisting of crossbeams resting or passing directly over the top of the doorpost (lehi). This is how modern rabbis arrived at the solution of having the eruv be made of a wire: The poles holding up the wire represent the "doorposts," and the wire itself represents the "crossbeam."
Many communities construct their eruvim by using lighting (or utility) poles to fulfill the requirement of doorposts and a continuous cable, string, or wire to represent the crossbeam. In order for this arrangement to be acceptable, the "beam" must rest directly above the top of the doorposts. Since this is not typically the case with utility poles--where the cable is attached either to the side or to an element that is held away from the pole--communities often attach a thin rod to the pole to serve as a substitute for the doorpost.
In areas where poles and lines do not exist, new arrangements must be made. The design of an eruv can make use of existing fences, overhead wires, hillsides, buildings, bridges, and other means that may serve as indicators of the eruv boundaries. This often requires communities to obtain permission from the appropriate authorities and property owners, and to work with local governments, power, telephone, and cable companies--a lengthy and often difficult process.
Those who use an eruv are obliged to ensure that it is intact before carrying on Shabbat. In most cases there is a group that is responsible for maintaining the eruv, providing information regarding its status, conducting weekly inspections to ensure that it hasn't been damaged, and dispensing repair crews when necessary. Many communities provide current information regarding their eruv by phone (eruv hotlines) and the web. They also provide maps delineating the exact boundaries of the eruv. (While Orthodox and Conservative understandings of Jewish law recognizes the restrictions that make an eruv necessary, other denominations generally do not.)
There are hundreds of eruvim in communities throughout the Jewish Diaspora (the U.S, Europe, South Africa, Australia), and many more in Israel. The challenge for these communities is incorporating the eruv into the streets of their cities. They must conduct traffic density studies in order to ensure that the number of people frequenting the area does not exceed 600,000 on a given day, while attempting to make use of existing urban structures to avoid wherever possible the need to construct the entire eruv themselves.
Controversies
Unlike other religious Jewish practices, which usually take place within private spaces, the eruv places signs in the public sphere; several communities have, therefore, encountered difficulty, controversy, and even major public battles in their attempt to receive the necessary authorization from authorities to establish their eruv.
The proposal submitted in 1992 for the North London eruv, for example, was met with public uproar, and was refused by the Town Planning Committee on the grounds that it would constitute a disturbance of visual amenity. Following an appeal made to the Secretary of State for the Environment, who found that the construction of the poles in chosen sites did not present any legal complication, the initial refusal was reversed.
Another controversy surrounding an eruv occurred in Palo Alto, California, in the summer of 1999. Residents of the city debated the eruv in a religious context, arguing over the distinction between temporary and permanent accommodations, and raising the concept of neighborliness as the underlying nature of a community. Some argued that the eruv created a walled city, and compromised property rights and the separation of Church and State, while others asserted that the eruv is not only harmless, but is a positive contribution to the larger community.
In addition, there are other controversies regarding eruvim among Jews as well. Rabbis debate the nature and specifications of the eruv amongst themselves, attempting to ensure standards that fulfill all halakhic (Jewish law) requirements. Many secular Jews are concerned about increased interaction with Orthodox Jews if many new families move to a neighborhood because of the eruv; they fear they may face pressure to change their lifestyle and become more observant. A public discussion over a religious issue such as an eruv tends to bring up many fissures within Jewish communities, often leading to harsh battles between secular and observant Jews over Jewish practice in a modern, secular society.
The eruv has been referred to as "an invisible wall of freedom." It brings about social liberation and an increase in the potential for interaction within the public sphere. It has also been nicknamed--using the Yiddish word for carrying--"the magic schlepping circle." Since the social aspect of Shabbat is one of the most significant elements fostering community bonding, the eruv proves to be instrumental in enhancing the Shabbat experience, though disagreements and disputes surrounding its very nature and essence are likely to continue.
======================================================================================
I am taking a birthday run up to Fort Tryon in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan where I live. As I approach Fort Tryon Park I notice, aided by the dazzling spring sunlight, the thinnest line of clear picture or fishing wire strung up way, way above my head. I could easily have missed seeing it.
Flashback: Years ago I had happened to read about the practice by members of a certain Jews who "define" themselves as a community, by putting up such -- I am going to call them (note, this is my word, not theirs) -- 'encirclements'.
In any event, I approach a mini-truck carrying the NYC Parks Department decal on its door and I draw the driver's attention to the wire above. There are other persons in the Parks mini-truck.
I say "Can you see this wire?" At first they could not. So I say "Well if you step out you can see it really clearly." The driver steps out of the truck, while the other Parks employee accompanying him, leans out of her window and said "Oh yeah, now I see it."
I continue "I am not going to name the group that carries out this practice on a public road in a public area. I have nothing against this group and I have no reason to have anything against this or any other group. But I am pretty sure it is illegal for any person or group to string a wire above a public space to advance their own private beliefs."
The driver thinks a minute then says, "This is a diverse community. I am going to go right now to my supervisor and report it."
I say "NOW you get it." We hi-5.
[I'll add more to this blog entry when I find out more what happened as a result of this moment of ethical reckoning in the context of the diverse secular public sphere in a democracy].
Whether it is a woman in niqab driving on a public tax-paid road, or a group that strings wire on a public tax-paid road to indicate they are exclusive, the consequence is the same -- such acts are an unwarranted intrusion into the Public Sphere of participatory civil society in a diverse democracy.
We have no empirical evidence of any contemporary society, democratic or otherwise, from Rio to Riyadh that is not DIVERSE. Therefore it seems to me, public spaces cannot be constrained by exclusionary acts of persons and groups.
Happy Birthday to me. Today, I feel even more energized than I usually am.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
copyright owned by:
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/In_the_Community/Eruv.shtml
Sharonne Cohen is an Israeli-Canadian writer, editor, translator, and teacher. She currently lives in Montreal.
---
Shabbat is a day set apart from all others, differentiating between the sacred (kodesh) and the mundane (hol), between the work week and the day designated for rest, family, and spirituality. On Shabbat all activities associated with work are prohibited, and according to traditional Jewish law include formal employment as well as traveling, spending money, and carrying items outside the home, in the public domain.
shabbat eruvThe prohibition against carrying includes house keys, prayer books, canes or walkers, and even children who cannot walk on their own. Recognizing the difficulties this rule imposes, the sages of the Talmud devised a way to allow for carrying in public without breaking the rule. Through this means, called an eruv, communities are able to turn a large area into one that is considered, for Jewish law purposes, a large private domain, in which items may be carried.
What It Is
The term eruv refers to the act of mixing or combining, and is shorthand for eruv hazerot--the mixing of domains, in this case, the private (rashut hayahid) and the public (rashut harabim). An eruv does not allow for carrying items otherwise prohibited by Jewish law on Shabbat, such as money or cell phones.
Having an eruv does not mean that a city or neighborhood is enclosed entirely by a wall. Rather, the eruv can be comprised of a series of pre-existing structures (walls, fences, electrical poles and wires) and/or structures created expressly for the eruv, often a wire mounted on poles. In practice, then, the eruv is a symbolic demarcation of the private sphere, one that communities come together to create.
To many people, the eruv sounds like a legal fiction, a way to circumvent the spirit and possibly letter of the law against carrying. To them, the eruv risks making the entire Jewish legal process seem absurd to non-Jews and non-observant Jews.
The talmudic Rabbis, however, were concerned with maintaining the integrity of the halakhic (Jewish legal) system while ensuring that the law is livable. Though the eruv makes use of a legal technicality, the fact that it is used--rather than allowing people to just carry anything, anywhere--is itself considered a form of respect for and submission to a legal system that is central and indispensable to traditionalist Jewish life.
The eruv helps enhance an aspect of Shabbat that the Rabbis considered vital-- "oneg Shabbat," the injunction to enjoy the Sabbath. With an eruv, Shabbat events are available to all families--young and old, mobile and less mobile--and individuals are able to carry house keys, reading glasses, or books outside their homes.
How It Works
Public domains are defined by Jewish law as non-residential areas, including streets, thoroughfares, plazas (open areas), and highways. Private domains are residential areas, and were originally referred to as homes surrounded by a wall, considered closed off from the surrounding public domains.
A designated space may be considered a private domain only when several conditions are met: It must cover an area of at least 12 square feet and must be somehow demarcated from its surroundings--either by a wall of some kind or by its actual topography (it must be all lower or all higher than its surroundings). If a space is frequented by more than 600,000 people each day it is considered too big to turn "private" with an eruv (which is why a large city like New York cannot have a single eruv constructed around it, though individual neighborhoods do). And an eruv cannot encompass two separate public spaces, so for instance, it may not cross over a river that cuts through town.
When eruvim (the plural of eruv) or parts of eruvim are constructed (as opposed to using pre-existing structures), they generally consist of a wire surrounding the designated area. The eruv, therefore, is unlikely to be noticed except by those looking for it, which fulfills a talmudic guideline that the eruvbe an integral part of the city, as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as possible.
Despite its symbolic nature, the eruv is intended to mimic in some way the form of walls, which need doorways--defined as two posts with a crossbeam over them, strong enough to withstand an ordinary wind. The eruv likewise needs openings, consisting of crossbeams resting or passing directly over the top of the doorpost (lehi). This is how modern rabbis arrived at the solution of having the eruv be made of a wire: The poles holding up the wire represent the "doorposts," and the wire itself represents the "crossbeam."
Many communities construct their eruvim by using lighting (or utility) poles to fulfill the requirement of doorposts and a continuous cable, string, or wire to represent the crossbeam. In order for this arrangement to be acceptable, the "beam" must rest directly above the top of the doorposts. Since this is not typically the case with utility poles--where the cable is attached either to the side or to an element that is held away from the pole--communities often attach a thin rod to the pole to serve as a substitute for the doorpost.
In areas where poles and lines do not exist, new arrangements must be made. The design of an eruv can make use of existing fences, overhead wires, hillsides, buildings, bridges, and other means that may serve as indicators of the eruv boundaries. This often requires communities to obtain permission from the appropriate authorities and property owners, and to work with local governments, power, telephone, and cable companies--a lengthy and often difficult process.
Those who use an eruv are obliged to ensure that it is intact before carrying on Shabbat. In most cases there is a group that is responsible for maintaining the eruv, providing information regarding its status, conducting weekly inspections to ensure that it hasn't been damaged, and dispensing repair crews when necessary. Many communities provide current information regarding their eruv by phone (eruv hotlines) and the web. They also provide maps delineating the exact boundaries of the eruv. (While Orthodox and Conservative understandings of Jewish law recognizes the restrictions that make an eruv necessary, other denominations generally do not.)
There are hundreds of eruvim in communities throughout the Jewish Diaspora (the U.S, Europe, South Africa, Australia), and many more in Israel. The challenge for these communities is incorporating the eruv into the streets of their cities. They must conduct traffic density studies in order to ensure that the number of people frequenting the area does not exceed 600,000 on a given day, while attempting to make use of existing urban structures to avoid wherever possible the need to construct the entire eruv themselves.
Controversies
Unlike other religious Jewish practices, which usually take place within private spaces, the eruv places signs in the public sphere; several communities have, therefore, encountered difficulty, controversy, and even major public battles in their attempt to receive the necessary authorization from authorities to establish their eruv.
The proposal submitted in 1992 for the North London eruv, for example, was met with public uproar, and was refused by the Town Planning Committee on the grounds that it would constitute a disturbance of visual amenity. Following an appeal made to the Secretary of State for the Environment, who found that the construction of the poles in chosen sites did not present any legal complication, the initial refusal was reversed.
Another controversy surrounding an eruv occurred in Palo Alto, California, in the summer of 1999. Residents of the city debated the eruv in a religious context, arguing over the distinction between temporary and permanent accommodations, and raising the concept of neighborliness as the underlying nature of a community. Some argued that the eruv created a walled city, and compromised property rights and the separation of Church and State, while others asserted that the eruv is not only harmless, but is a positive contribution to the larger community.
In addition, there are other controversies regarding eruvim among Jews as well. Rabbis debate the nature and specifications of the eruv amongst themselves, attempting to ensure standards that fulfill all halakhic (Jewish law) requirements. Many secular Jews are concerned about increased interaction with Orthodox Jews if many new families move to a neighborhood because of the eruv; they fear they may face pressure to change their lifestyle and become more observant. A public discussion over a religious issue such as an eruv tends to bring up many fissures within Jewish communities, often leading to harsh battles between secular and observant Jews over Jewish practice in a modern, secular society.
The eruv has been referred to as "an invisible wall of freedom." It brings about social liberation and an increase in the potential for interaction within the public sphere. It has also been nicknamed--using the Yiddish word for carrying--"the magic schlepping circle." Since the social aspect of Shabbat is one of the most significant elements fostering community bonding, the eruv proves to be instrumental in enhancing the Shabbat experience, though disagreements and disputes surrounding its very nature and essence are likely to continue.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
4:23 am
My NYT Comment #75.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
8:39 am
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
\"New Peace in commute\" for India's women? Your article illustrates the axiom -- No Justice No Peace.
Women-only commuter trains are an integral part of an adhoc, unequal, inadequate and functionally inequitable public transportation policy in Indian Democracy.
Gender segregation on public transportation reinforces the most negative aspects of India's powerfully entrenched patriarchy. Sequestered travel on a train to work is predictively unlikely to increase women's safety, or equal participation in India's democracy.
India's public transportation systems are grossly underfunded. This inequity punishes the poor, especially the poorest women. The nation's poorest women, don't get to ride these commuter trains. That structural inequity is the crux of the problem. In a nation-state that should be providing adequate public transportation for ALL, while making every attempt at a smaller carbon footprint, regardless of what the West does.
Finger-pointing at the West will not help Indians become more ecologically responsible or more socially just, as they attempt to meet their expanding transportation needs.
An Indian policy implementation of relentless attrition in funding, blatantly devalues PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION as a universal social good that should be intentionally deployed, through policy, by both the Centre and the States, as a powerful social leveler, in our unprecedented democratic civil society.
I travel to India twice a year every year (since 1999), spending a total of 5 months, every visit. Over this past summer, I traveled in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, logging thousands of miles and several days on trains and buses. That's democracy on wheels.
A woman, I travel alone in India, entirely by State public buses, state-run commuter trains and the Indian railways ((Second Class sleeper), refusing to use cars proffered by my middle class relatives. Any form of PUBLIC transport is acceptable to me.
Now that may appear eccentric or overly zealous but I am attempting, always in flawed fashion, to sincerely develop ethical practices of civic participation, in myself (no one else), within Indian democracy.
In my view, India cannot afford to produce, much less dispose, a paper cup, as millions carelessly do daily on the Indian trains, any more than India can afford to promote PRIVATE transportation over PUBLIC transportation. Mass Public Transit is a core social justice issue in India's current stage of development, right up there with food/water security, shelter, universal healthcare, universal primary/ secondary education, employment.
My Indian women and men co-travelers in Democracy, especially the burgeoning, heavily subsidized and bribegiving/bribetaking, complicit-in-corruption middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of the women-only commuter trains, can fight JOINTLY for adequate affordable PUBLIC transportation for ALL, instead of cynically choosing cars over buses and/or riding separately in trains.
Such vigorous civic participation would likely advance the Greater Collective Good (GCG), a wholly attainable ideal of ethical democracy.
Satyameva Jayate!
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/asia/16ladies.html
On India’s Railways, Women Find New Peace in Commute
New York City
September 16th, 2009
4:23 am
My NYT Comment #75.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
8:39 am
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
\"New Peace in commute\" for India's women? Your article illustrates the axiom -- No Justice No Peace.
Women-only commuter trains are an integral part of an adhoc, unequal, inadequate and functionally inequitable public transportation policy in Indian Democracy.
Gender segregation on public transportation reinforces the most negative aspects of India's powerfully entrenched patriarchy. Sequestered travel on a train to work is predictively unlikely to increase women's safety, or equal participation in India's democracy.
India's public transportation systems are grossly underfunded. This inequity punishes the poor, especially the poorest women. The nation's poorest women, don't get to ride these commuter trains. That structural inequity is the crux of the problem. In a nation-state that should be providing adequate public transportation for ALL, while making every attempt at a smaller carbon footprint, regardless of what the West does.
Finger-pointing at the West will not help Indians become more ecologically responsible or more socially just, as they attempt to meet their expanding transportation needs.
An Indian policy implementation of relentless attrition in funding, blatantly devalues PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION as a universal social good that should be intentionally deployed, through policy, by both the Centre and the States, as a powerful social leveler, in our unprecedented democratic civil society.
I travel to India twice a year every year (since 1999), spending a total of 5 months, every visit. Over this past summer, I traveled in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, logging thousands of miles and several days on trains and buses. That's democracy on wheels.
A woman, I travel alone in India, entirely by State public buses, state-run commuter trains and the Indian railways ((Second Class sleeper), refusing to use cars proffered by my middle class relatives. Any form of PUBLIC transport is acceptable to me.
Now that may appear eccentric or overly zealous but I am attempting, always in flawed fashion, to sincerely develop ethical practices of civic participation, in myself (no one else), within Indian democracy.
In my view, India cannot afford to produce, much less dispose, a paper cup, as millions carelessly do daily on the Indian trains, any more than India can afford to promote PRIVATE transportation over PUBLIC transportation. Mass Public Transit is a core social justice issue in India's current stage of development, right up there with food/water security, shelter, universal healthcare, universal primary/ secondary education, employment.
My Indian women and men co-travelers in Democracy, especially the burgeoning, heavily subsidized and bribegiving/bribetaking, complicit-in-corruption middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of the women-only commuter trains, can fight JOINTLY for adequate affordable PUBLIC transportation for ALL, instead of cynically choosing cars over buses and/or riding separately in trains.
Such vigorous civic participation would likely advance the Greater Collective Good (GCG), a wholly attainable ideal of ethical democracy.
Satyameva Jayate!
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/asia/16ladies.html
On India’s Railways, Women Find New Peace in Commute
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