US Roman Catholic bishops have been ordered to quit saying “Yahweh,” one of the common pronuncations of the Hebrew name of God. (“Jehovah” is another common pronunciation of the vowel-less Hebrew name.)
Should UUs follow suit?
I say “Yahweh” fairly often, or at least as often as it comes up. When I talk about him, it’s usually about the biblical character as interpreted by the likes Harold Bloom and Jack Miles, or else as the god of the J Writer as opposed to the god portrayed by other biblical traditions.
Using the name allows me to signal, without going into so many words, that “Yahweh” is a specific, inspiring take on God but not one I can call my own. He’s probably the most influential literary character in history, in ways obvious and subtle. But he’s not my god.
Should I consider myself bound by politeness to not say his name, in the same way that I wouldn’t, out of politeness, take the host—that is, the body of Christ—from a Catholic mass, even though I don’t believe it’s the body of Christ?
Or is this akin to not keeping kosher, something that observant Jews do but that has nothing at all to do with me?
Or is this a case of cultural misappropriation, the UU sin de jure?
Does that mean using recipes from a kosher cookbook is misappropriation if you aren’t a practicing Jew? When I was a vegetarian many years ago I found the Kosher cookbook to be my most useful one, since anything with milk had no meat.
I prefer “Tetragrammaton” but that might just be because I like Greek more than Hebrew. It is a bit of a mouthful, but no worse than “Unitarian-Universalist”
Either way I think it’s important to distinguish between the God of the J Source and other God-concepts from inside and outside Judeo-Christian traditions.
hey — where are you? Are you ok?
Hey Kim. I’m good. We’re five months pregnant and work is crazy busy, so no blogging for Chutney. I’m hoping to get some writing done over the holidays, but we’ll see.
Well, good. Congratulations and good luck on the pregnancy.