Post Aiit3CIFEurezZKZbE by taalumot@stoat.zone
(DIR) More posts by taalumot@stoat.zone
(DIR) Post #Aiit37JTktsfXwrzKS by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T13:42:10Z
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You know, I don’t say this enough:I believe — whole-heartedly and whole-throatedly — in religious conversion.The way I talk about culture and lineage, you might not think so, or you might think I’m very strict about it or something, and I know that at least *Jewish* converts often feel exclusionary pressure about that.That’s never my intention. Converts are holy, holy Jews. The thing is, Jewish conversion is a *very intensive process*, and that’s where my standards come from.
(DIR) Post #Aiit38NPnkciqRie6S by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T13:48:45Z
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I say this part a lot; it’s one of my favorite personal cliches. Conversion to become a Jew is more analogous to immigration than baptism, and baptism is the conversion modality invented for the transmission of ideological religions in the culture-erasing milieu of global empires, so it’s usually what comes to mind for residents of such empires: You make a mental and verbal declaration of some ideological payload, you dunk in the water, and when you pop out, you’re in.That’s not my culture.
(DIR) Post #Aiit39SllKV6DLER5U by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T13:53:47Z
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But it’s not because I don’t believe in the idea of being cleansed and reborn — where do you think the early Christians, who were Jews, got their mikveh practice from? — but rather because I don’t accept the sufficiency of considering this a personal, private, inward, propositional transformation. That’s not how purification functions in Jewish practice. It’s a communal condition, one that determines one’s readiness for participation in communal life. And that conversion involves both sides.
(DIR) Post #Aiit3AOuHB0N7eQrho by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T13:59:12Z
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So to me, a conversion story is one about joining a community, and no human desire could possibly be more understandable to me. When I learn someone is a convert, I expect to encounter a kind of respect and sensitivity that can only be learned by struggling to integrate intentionally into a community full of people who take their own standards for granted because, to them, they’re expected defaults.When I meet a person who says they’re a convert, that is my assumption about who I’m meeting.
(DIR) Post #Aiit3B8zVprtQZzfXM by mattskala@mstdn.io
2024-06-08T16:18:44Z
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@taalumot This made me wonder what I think about apostates, who also have had an important experience I feel I must take into account in understanding them, though I'm not sure I can state precisely what I think that experience is.And "apostate" is a term I've sometimes used to describe myself in social media "bio" fields, though so far not one person has asked me, apostate from what.
(DIR) Post #Aiit3CIFEurezZKZbE by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T14:02:22Z
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Occasionally, though, they turn out not to be that sort of convert but rather one of the culture-erasing global empire variety, a Seeker™, someone who is exploring the world’s cultures like a bounty to be exploited to improve their personal lot in this world or the next.But my disapproval of this lifestyle is not a disapproval of converts. On the contrary, it’s a judgment that such a person is not yet a convert. They don’t meet the standards.
(DIR) Post #AiitGJJmQuAAXlImMi by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T16:21:36Z
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@mattskala When you self-identify with it, would you say you’re using it as a descriptor of something social?
(DIR) Post #AiitYr3DkmE8NQOnDM by mattskala@mstdn.io
2024-06-08T16:25:04Z
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@taalumot Not really. I'm no longer a worshipper of a goddess I used to worship, and that was always a personal commitment not shared with others.And on the contrary, I've *remained* in the same community I was in before that change happened. I do think that joining or leaving religions is more about what kind of person one wants to be, than about "belief," and in fact I I think I can say that it came down to choosing between my belief and the kind of person I wanted to be.
(DIR) Post #Aiitf3SKXqTiaV6GfI by mattskala@mstdn.io
2024-06-08T16:26:08Z
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@taalumot I guess that's one thing about polytheism - you can leave a deity without leaving the religion.
(DIR) Post #AiiuzYBW6bGxdZZZ68 by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T16:41:02Z
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@mattskala That is an interesting and important observation
(DIR) Post #Aiiv4zqGhh6qrYEMu8 by mattskala@mstdn.io
2024-06-08T16:42:04Z
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@taalumot Maybe the general form of the apostate story is that it's someone who has had to face what's really important to them.
(DIR) Post #AiivsifCqZ7q41lZBo by taalumot@stoat.zone
2024-06-08T16:50:56Z
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@mattskala Yeah I like that a lot, and it touches into what I was saying about natives and their defaults. Any religious tradition that wants to survive would do well to build in introspection about what’s important, so that those who belong in their tradition’s defaults KNOW it, and so those that don’t know that, too.
(DIR) Post #AiiwPdAyGqfObIJjvM by mattskala@mstdn.io
2024-06-08T16:56:58Z
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@taalumot Much of my experience has been with traditions that emphasize individualism, which limits how much I can know what to expect from people involved in those traditions. However, there definitely *are* still defaults, especially in the "social" aspects of the tradition, and where the lines among those are drawn is itself part of the defaults.I'm reminded of a friend who went to a Unitarian church and was frustrated he couldn't figure out what they believe. He'd learned *something*..