Bearers Of Tradition Research Articles

Fingalian Topographies: Ossian and the Highland Tour, 1760‐1805

AbstractIf Ossian validated the Highland landscape for eighteenth‐century tourists, the landscape, in turn, seemed to authenticate poems whose authenticity never ceased to be doubted; but text and topography alike ran the risk of dissolving into insubstantiality. Many tourists cited ‘local tradition’ in order to embroider existing (or to invent new) Fingalian place‐names. Ranging over a wide variety of eighteenth‐century travel‐writers, this article casts new light on the relations between Ossian, travel‐writing and Highland topography. It concludes by discussing the ‘fieldwork’ tradition of Ossianic tourism after 1800, which sought out local tradition bearers, rather than attempting to authenticate Macpherson's ‘translations’.

WOMEN AS GODDESS IN INDIAN ART

In India, we find the worship of great mother in varying forms. The Female figures from Indus civilization indicate the fertility cult. , the early records of terracotta sculpture are the evidences. Since IInd century A.D. Devi Durga, Lakshmi and Matraka are remain popular and worshipped. The goddess on a lion depicted first time in Kushan Period. Some of the goddess is the anthromorphic personification of nature. The Yakshis are the nature goddess. In Folk societies, socialization, education, recreation and communication of new ideas moral values and knowledge are inculcated by the women. They are the active bearer of oral tradition in India.

Hadis Usul Tarihindeki Yeri Bağlamında Kadı İyâz’ın (v.544/1149) el-İlma' ila ma'rifeti usuli'r-rivaye ve takyidi's-sema' Adlı Eseri

There are important personalities and monuments in every branches of Islamic sciences which vitalize these areas and play important roles in the development of these sciences. One of these characters who has great impact on the development of Hadith Methodology is, an Andalusian scholar, Qadi ʿIyad and his masterpiece al- ʿ Ilma. This masterwork has great magnitude in terms of its role as a bearer of the scholarly tradition of his predecessors and as a source of later works. In this article we have focused on al- ʿ Ilma in the context of its place in the history and literature of the hadith methodology. Firstly, the importance of this book unearthed, secondly the purpose of its copyright and its content have been discussed. Thirdly the methodology of Qadi ʿIyad’s hadith usage in his book and its relationship with the previous methodological sources of hadith science have been dealt. As a conclusion, in this article, the historical and scientifical worth of this classical book on hadith methodology is revealed. Key Words: . Qādī ʿIyād, al-Ilma', Hadith Methodology, al-Andalus.

Native Seattle in the Concert Hall: An Ethnography of Two Symphonies

Abstract Musical collaborations between Native North American tradition bearers and non- Native musicians are no longer rare events, but such encounters continue to involve the dynamics of cultural hegemony and negotiations between different modes of musical thinking. Two projects involving the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Western art music composers, and Coast Salish tribes of western Washington State exemplify the complex processes of intercultural relationship in the composition and performance of two works, “The Healing Heart of the People of this Land,” and “Potlatch Symphony.” In this paper I focus on the strategies employed by local Native participants to maintain traditional protocols for the distribution and performance of Coast Salish songs.

Ecotypes: Theory of the Lived and Narrated Experience

An Innovative/Subversive ConceptAmong the theoretical concepts that have emerged fruitful crossroads of folklore studies and neighboring disciplines, one of the most versatile and productive may be the concept of ecotype, although created in the twentieth century true to older practice of naming scientific terms and concepts in Greek or Latin, traditionally named oikotype. The classical Greek oixoc (pronounced: oikos) denoted primarily a house, a dwelling, or a household. It thus encompassed the experience of space in combination with the most intimate social formations associated with a private dwelling. When Swedish folklorist and ethnologist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878-1952)1 picked the term for describing a process of cultural adaptation of tradition, he was imputing into his terminology the subjectivity of the (also his term) whose close contact with their natural environment was a key paradigm for his analytical work.We cannot and do not want to gloss over von Sydow's enthusiasm for Nazi ideology during World War II in neutral Sweden, that has been documented, laid bare, and castigated by Nils Arvid Bringeus. This deplorable fact may have been connected with a heightened valuation of the physical territory and nature the locus of the spirit of a particular folk identity transposed to a particular nation and/or race. It is, however, not visibly expressed in the essay in which the concept of ecotype is proposed: On the Spread of Tradition (Sydow),2 and was not really known among folklorists until its revealing in Bringeus's book (178-86).Definition and ConceptualizationIn its most general and unspecified form the concept of ecotype denotes primarily a variation in international type (usually a tale-type) specific to area or a group. It is thus rooted in the typological approach that reigned in the geographical-historical (Finnish) school of folklore studies dominating the field from the second half of the nineteenth century until the early 1960s. In his article Geography and Folk-Tale Oicotypes, von Sydow elaborated the term with special reference to the study of folktales and integrated it into his study on the transmission and dynamics of tradition, calling for a study of folktales as part of natural, living whole (44). It is this aspect that has been viewed his contestation of the methodology of the then-influential geographical-historical school. He later reformulated the concept a number of times.3In a footnote von Sydow explicates the origin of the term in botany, referring to an inherited form of adaptation to a specific environment, common to different individuals of a (Geography and Folk-Tale Oicotypes 243 n. II, 5). The biological metaphor of ecotype, which von Sydow creatively applied, refers to the ecological adaptation of a zoological, or rather botanical, species to a new environment to which it has been transported. For von Sydow's model of the distribution of the activity of tradition bearers (a term that he created and theorized well), that is, human agents who actively narrate and less actively listen, was of major importance. The functional or rather functionalist theory he constructed was thus deeply interactional and socially contextualized. Whereas von Sydow himself focused on narrative linking it strongly with what Dov Noy (Folklore) has termed cogitative folklore, that is, beliefs, symbols, and rituals, his disciples, for instance, Albert Eskerod applied the concept and the ensuing methods to ethnological projects such studying the entire life world4 of fishing villages and to the concept of year cycle embodied in harvest festivals. Eskerod amplified the von Sydowian functional analysis with explicit application of Malinowski's functionalist work.Von Sydow's contestation of the dominant geographical-historical school's principles aims at their super organic theory isolating the products of from the human agents of the production of tradition. …

Refiguring the South Asian American Tradition Bearer: Performing the "Third Gender" in Yoni Ki Baat

Abstract In recent years, a growing group of scholars has begun to draw upon queer theory as they research aspects of LGBTQ folk performances and texts from around the globe. In the process, folklore scholars have become increasingly intrigued by bodies that appear to transgress dimorphism, and complicate binary oppositions like male/female. Performances of gender identity and sexuality by hijras in South Asia have awakened audiences’ imaginings since the Kama Sutra period (Gupta 2005:180). In folktale, dance, song, religious epic, and popular culture, the figure of the hijra often evokes a liminal play of "otherness." Commonly known as the "third gender"--a conceptual space outside of typical Western constructs--hijra individuals engage with varied notions of transsexual, transgender, intersex, cross-dresser, eunuch, or sexual fluidity. This article focuses on a feminist appropriation of the hijra within Yoni Ki Baat, a South Asian American version of The Vagina Monologues. The authors explore how the figure of the hijra--drawn from South Asian folk narratives, religious discourse, and popular culture--might be used strategically by social activists in political performance narratives to (1) encourage a complicated sense of sexually ambiguous or queer practices and identities, and (2) acknowledge individuals facing social oppression due to their marginalized identities. As such, their approach conceptualizes performance as both a relational space and as a space in which to wonder about questions of relationality (Madison and Hamera 2006; Schechner 1990).

The Value of Narrative Art in Folklore

The study of folklore contributes to deeper understanding of not only our past, but contemporaneity as well, because they are closely interconnected with each other. The main purpose of this paper is to study art and creative practice of Kazakh narrators, the peculiarities of their repertoire as an integral system, to characterize the narrator schools of Kazakhstan, and also to reveal the correlation of tradition and improvisation in the art of narration. The paper determines the role of epic narrators in social and cultural folk life, as the direct creators and bearers of epic tradition; their creative types are revealed. The art of narration is described based on local peculiarities, style directions, originality of repertoire and other criteria; it is distinctively characterized by its inhering properties. The narrators develop the epic heritage, using the zhels to create the artistic images. These zhels, created on the basis of improvisation, were subsequently turned into stable, unchangeable components of the literary piece; they were supplemented, became the independent pieces and were performed by the narrators directly before large epic pieces. The zhels became the poetic device of Kazakh art of narration, proved in this article. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p481

Insider-outsider phenomenon in traditional dance research in indigenous communities

Scholarly research in the field of traditional dance1 has been carried out under the umbrella of cultural studies that have been ignored in all academic circles in the East African states of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. Until the late 1960s, there was no distinguished academic institution in the East African region that offered studies in dance. Although traditional dance plays a pivotal role in the execution of the day-to-day activities in many East African communities, less effort has been put into its development in form of research from within the region. Much of its sources today create concern due, but not limited only, to their scarcity, but also to the fact that outsiders from the dance traditions in question mostly author them, thereby creating a perennial outsider-researcher phenomenon. In this paper, I reflect on two traditional dance research experiences; In Transylvania — Romania in October 2013, and a comparatively longer experience of folk dancing in the different rural communities of Uganda in a quest to further understand the practical results of a field research in traditional dance that is rather dominated by dance researchers from outside that dance culture, and the influence of such research results to the bearers of the dance tradition.

Manuscript and Memory in Religious Communities in the Medieval Low Countries. An Introduction

The special issue ‘Manuscript and Memory in Religious Communities in the Medieval Low Countries’ aims at critically questioning how memorial practices, developed through and shaped by the medieval manuscript culture, contributed to strengthening religious communal life between the tenth and the early sixteenth centuries. The introductory article briefly examines the research traditions that have informed this collection of essays. On the one hand there is the tradition of memory studies, which since the late 1980s has become increasingly important in many humanities disciplines, particularly in medieval studies with its significant interest in the impact of the religiously-inspired memoria culture on medieval society. On the other hand, since the 1990s the same field of medieval studies has also been marked by the rise of material philology, which has not only fuelled many theoretical debates about the way in which our textual heritage should be understood and edited, but has also resulted in a renewed appreciation of the study of manuscripts themselves as meaningful bearers of medieval textual traditions. The introductory article subsequently explains how combining these two research traditions compels us to reconsider the role of manuscripts (cartularies, miscellanies, collections of sermons, etc.) and the deployment of genres (annals, charters, lives, necrologia, treatises, etc.) in the study of the culture of memoria in medieval religious communities.

Radical Recreation: Non-Iconic Movements of Tradition in Keralite Classical Dance

Many studies assume that dance develops as a bearer of tradition through iconic continuity (Downey 2005; Hahn 2007; Meduri 1996, 2004; Srinivasan 2007, 2011, Zarrilli 2000). In some such studies, lapses in Iconic continuity are highlighted to demonstrate how “tradition” is “constructed”, lacking substantive historical character or continuity (Meduri 1996; Srinivasan 2007, 2012). In the case of Mohiniyattam – a classical dance of Kerala, India – understanding the form’s tradition as built on Iconic transfers of semiotic content does not account for the overarching trajectory of the forms’ history. Iconic replication of the form as it passed from teacher to student was largely absent in its recreation in the early 20th century. Simply, there were very few dancers available to teach the older practice to new dancers in the 1960s. And yet, Mohiniyattam dance is certainly considered to be a “traditional” style to its practitioners. Throughout this paper I argue that the use of Peircean categories to understand the semiotic processes of Mohiniyattam’s reinvention in the 20th century allows us to reconsider tradition as a matter of Iconic continuity. In particular, an examination of transfers of repertoire in the early 20th century demonstrates that the “traditional” and “authentic” character of this dance style resides in semeiotic processes beyond Iconic reiteration; specifically, the “traditional” character of Mohiniyattam is Indexical and Symbolic in nature.

Tradition Bearers as Educators: A Multi-Case Study of the Teaching Behaviors and Beliefs of Three Old-Time Musicians

The purpose of this study was to examine the teaching behaviors and beliefs of three “tradition bearers” of old-time music: Alice Gerrard, Tom Sauber, and Lightnin’ Wells. The three teachers were selected based on their extensive careers as performers of old-time and folk music, and their reputations as teachers of old-time and folk music. Data were collected at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, and included 18 hours of video data, personal interviews, and field notes. Coding of the video revealed three main themes in the tradition bearers’ teaching: (1) Demonstration: use of recordings, teacher performance at tempo, teacher performance at reduced tempo, and co-verbal demonstration, (2) Verbal Instruction: verbal explanation, discussion, feedback, and story telling and (3) Group Play: whole group macro, whole group micro, and isolated play. Throughout the interviews, the tradition bearers shared their beliefs about teaching old-time music, the differences between they way they teach compared to how they learned, their goals for students, and their opinions about the role of tradition bearers in the education of old-time musicians.

The Actual Usage of Paremias in the Electronic Discourse: the Internet Comments

This article marks the starting point for the projected successive research of paremias used in the electronic discourse. The communication in the virtual space, the so-called “talking in writing” is considered by the modern communication researchers to be relatively equivalent to the spoken language. Therefore this mode of communication is suitable for paremiology in view of searching evidence for the continuity of traditional usage of paremias and in defining its modern expressions. This time, a specific kind of the electronic discourse was picked out for the analysis, namely, the comments to the news articles. Paremias used in the comments to four thematically different articles published in the news portal delfi.lt are examined in the article. The analysis includes registering the number and peculiarities of the used paremias, establishing the extent that their usage is affected by the theme of the article, determining the intentions of their use and the possible characteristics of the users.The modern society apparently has adopted mechanisms of the “paremic” thinking and speech, while using paremias in the comments to the internet articles can well be regarded as the actual living usage of paremias. It was established by the analysis that traditional paremias are more current in the internet comments rather than their transformations. Therefore question is raised, if this reflects the general pattern of using paremias in the electronic discourse and in the modern society, or if such proportion between the traditional and the modified paremias can be determined by the actual kind of the electronic discourse, namely, the internet comments. Presumably, the traditional paremias are handier as readymade phrases that can be spontaneously inserted into the comment. Besides, their general popularity ensures their greater effect and impact in comparison to the transformations, thus making them better means of persuasion.The theme of the news article determines the choice of only those paremias that are directly related to it. Apparently, in the comments to the article discussing a certain famous personality, the evaluating paremias or those describing some personal features are more numerous, while in the comments to the articles dealing with universal problematic, the generalizing paremias prevail. Some paremias are used as reactions to other comments; these can therefore be totally irrelevant to the theme of the article.Analysis of the actual position of paremias in the structural pattern of the comment reveals similarities of this “genre” both to the spoken language and to the media discourse. Using of paremias in the coherent text of the comment in order to summarize the expressed view or simply in order to state the commenter’s opinion is typical for the oral tradition. While using of paremias to entitle the comment or as the introductory phrases is typical for the journalism.Paremias used in the comments allow for conjuring up just a very general and sketchy socio-psychological portrait of the commenter. This person can be male or female, rather well-educated and civilized, characterized by his / her need for public self-expression and eager to find additional means emphasizing his / her individuality. This person is both creative and resourceful, and, most importantly, a bearer of the actual tradition of using paremias.

Maya after War: Conflict, Power, and Politics in Guatemala by Jennifer L. Burrell (review)

Jennifer L. Burrell, Maya after War: Conflict, Power, and Politics in Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. 238 pp.In many ways, Jennifer Burrell and Ellen Moodie argue in their introduction to Central America in the New Millennium (2012), Central America is very 1980s. In the late 20th century, revolutionary tumult in the region captured the attention of solidarity-minded North Americans, Nobel Peace Prize jurors, and the US State Department. The Annual Review of Anthropology published two review articles dedicated to Central American research in that decade. But once accords were signed and democratic transitions declared, the geopolitical spotlight moved on, and the region once again slipped into relative obscurity. Nonetheless, scholars whose commitments formed during this period of hope and violence have continued to document the region, producing moving accounts of the aftermath of war and the lived experience of a peace that exists in name only (e.g., Moodie 2011, Zilberg 2011).Jennifer Burrell's thoughtfully constructed and eloquently written Maya after War is the latest contribution to this emerging literature on transitional periods, which she defines people struggling to come to terms with the past while trying to move onto something new. Maya after War opens with the celebration of the signing of the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords in the Mam Maya village of Todos Santos, where the mood is decidedly muted. As one of Burrell's interlocutors observes, as long we're still poor, hasn't arrived. The myriad ways in which has yet to arrive structure the chapters that follow, which use the specific context of the village to explore many of the new forms of violence that typify the post-war period throughout the region, including lynching, gangs, and reparamilitarization. Burrell has the advantage of hindsight in this account: she has been conducting fieldwork in this predominantly Mayan village in highlands Guatemala offand on for the last 20 years, with several years of consecutive residence in the late 1990s. This perspective allows her to document changes over time, including people's experiences of the changing Guatemalan state and the rippling social effects of intensive outmigration.The area glossed Mesoamerica boasts a long ethnographic record. Much of this work was produced during the reign of functionalism, when scholars privileged solidarity and cohesion in their accounts of the social. Burrell mines this extensive ethnographic literature to contextualize her study, but her theoretical trajectory (along with the indubitable evidence from her fieldsite) leads her to emphasize conflict over cohesion. At one point, she refers to her book a compendium of conflict, noting that, conflict binds people much to each other shared (9). In this compendium, Disputes that had been ongoing for generations seethed in different registers and became newly consequential in the post-war period (6). Paul and Demerest (1988) memorably made this point in Harvest of Violence when they recounted the ways in which Mayan villagers took advantage of counterinsurgency politics to pursue personal grudges. In the seething post-war register that Burrell chronicles, anticommunist discourse has morphed into anti-gang politics generations' old conflicts over land continue to play out in the post-war securityscape.A related point to Burrell's concern for conflict is her interest in the processual. She situates her work in a Marxist intellectual lineage, with nods to Raymond Williams, Eric Wolf, and William Roseberry. As Burrell explains: A focus on history and violence invites thinking about process, thereby moving away from static notions of culture and society and from reading particular forms received or natural (151). Thus, this work goes against the grain of the regnant common sense in Guatemala (and beyond) that sees the Maya static bearers of tradition and interprets the violence besetting the region an ahistorical product of culture. …

Linking local and global: Yup'ik elders working together with one mind

In this paper, I describe a decade of work with the Calista Elders Council (CEC), a non-profit organization, representing the 1900 Yup'ik tradition bearers of the Yukon–Kuskokwim delta in southwest Alaska. CEC is the major research organization for the region and is active in documenting Yup'ik traditional knowledge. CEC was established in 1991 by Calista (the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act profit corporation for the Yukon–Kuskokwim delta). Mark John (originally from the Nelson Island community of Toksook Bay) became executive director in 1997. Under John's leadership, guided by a nine-member board of elders, the CEC developed a program to address cultural issues, including rapid loss of traditional knowledge. Since 2000, these documentation efforts have been supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and have resulted in 10 major publications, a museum exhibition, two websites, as well as numerous papers and public presentations. Along with these products, CEC has developed a collaborative approach that continues to allow nonnative scientists like myself and Yup'ik community members to work together as we document and share knowledge in new ways. This paper describes both the strengths and limitations of this approach in accomplishing elders’ primary goal, i.e. ensuring that their view of the world continue a living tradition. The discussion attempts to go beyond the technical and pragmatic aspects of data management to address ethical and social issues of sharing knowledge.

Learning and Remembering Gaelic Stories: Brian Stewart

Questions about how Gaelic storytellers have learned, remembered and performed their tales are key to understanding the Gaelic narrative tradition. This article examines the experience of Brian Stewart, a Scottish Gaelic storyteller, and the techniques he reported using for learning, remembering and telling traditional Gaelic stories. Mr Stewart learned his stories – native heroic or international wonder tales – from his grandmother Susie Stewart and his uncle Alasdair Stewart (also known as ‘Alilidh Dall’). Strategies considered include taking an interest in stories; repeatedly listening to tales being told by a more experienced tradition bearer; practicing in front of, and being corrected by, another storyteller; consciously reviewing and rehearsing tales; visualizing stories; and retaining a faithful memory of formulaic language or runs. The difference between learning a story and learning a song is also discussed. It is suggested that studying these strategies can contribute to a better understanding of the Stewarts’ storytelling ethos.

Chartism, Commemoration, and the Cult of the Radical Hero, c. 1770- c. 1840

Since its first appearance in the title of a collection of essays edited by Hobsbawm and Ranger in 1983, the ‘invention of tradition’ has become part of the mental furniture of the historian. Yet we know much less about how labour movements invented their own legitimating traditions as the historiography is dominated by discussions of ‘official’ attempts to invent tradition, such as that undertaken by states and colonial authorities. This article explores this process through a case study of the Chartist movement. Many historians have argued that Chartists were bearers of a radical tradition which had its origins in the 1770s. Thus, it is surprising that historians have paid little detailed attention to how Chartists saw themselves in relation to this diverse radical tradition or indeed to the ways in which they invented their own tradition. This article focuses on one key aspect of this invented tradition: the construction of a pantheon of heroes from the recent radical past. By drawing on recent work on...

Ethnomemory: Ethnographic and Culture-Centered Approaches to the Study of Memory

EthnomemoryEthnographic and Culture-Centered Approaches to the Study of Memory Thomas A. DuBois The “truth” of historical legends is not identical with the “truth” of legal documents and history books, and official documents themselves are not necessarily “objective” reports. —Brynjulf Alver 1989, 149 Sámi singing is called joiking. It is a practice for recalling other people. Some are recalled with hate, and some with love, and some are recalled with sorrow. —Johan Turi 2011, 161 If the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century witnessed a concerted scholarly effort to divorce the then-emerging ethnographic social sciences—folklore studies, ethnology, anthropology—from the realm of the humanities, the latter decades of the century saw growing efforts by scholars in these same fields to recover lost ground and to restore the humanistic natures of their disciplines. The “men of science” of the formative years of Nordic and American folklore studies gave us epic laws (Olrik 1965) for how folktales were constructed, typologies of memory failures involved in the changing lyrics of ballads (Burns 1970), and continual discussion about the possible or unlikely factual reliability of legends as sources for historical reconstruction (something that I will partly repeat myself in the following pages). Folklorists saw themselves as uncovering the mental scaffolding of oral tradition, and when the formal analysis of Vladimir Propp (1968) became known to scholars in Western Europe and America, it seemed to complete the disciplinary journey toward [End Page 306] a scientific understanding of the production and transmission of even complex and nuanced cultural creations like the folktale. Yet, even amid the elation of this march toward morphology (cf. Dundes 1980) as a prime metaphor for the field of folklore studies, there were stirrings in the opposite direction, a desire to look at products of oral tradition as works of creativity, and to look at performers of folklore as creative artists rather than as passive bearers of tradition. These folkloristic stirrings were abetted by parallel acts among anthropologists, and eventually a loose confederation of new terms emerged: ethnohistory, ethnopoetics, and indigenous methodology. This paper deals with the ideas behind these terms and what they can tell us about the expressive culture of medieval Scandinavia. In the quotation that opens this paper, Brynjulf Alver (1924–2009) argued cogently that the fascination—indeed, obsession—among folklorists and historians about whether historical legends could be “true” or not misses entirely the core reasons why people retell legends, and the values or truths that they seek to impart through them. Alver argues in a sense for abandoning “historicity” as a measure of quality or value in folklore studies, replacing it with an attention to the moral, ideological, and aesthetic elements of the legend that are more organic to its nature and ongoing popularity. In other words, he sought to redirect folkloristic discourse toward a more humanistic stance toward memory, one not focused on the retention or loss of verifiable facts, but on the cultural and emotional significance of the related narrative to performers and their audiences. In the second quotation above, the great Sámi writer Johan Turi (1854–1956) attempts to explain to a non-Sámi audience the meaning and workings of a genre of song he knew as luohti, joik. He describes the genre as a means of muitingoansta—a way of remembering, recalling—that is, of encapsulating into the sounds and performance of a song the remembered essence of another being, be it a person, place, animal, or historical event. Johan Turi also recounts historical legends in his book, but he describes joik in particular as the prime means by which Sámi remember their world and the beings that share it. I hope to explore in this paper what it would mean for medievalist folklorists to truly follow Alver’s call toward a more humanistic approach to narrative, and what it might mean for the field of folklore in general to embrace the idea of genres like joik or poetry or non-narrative song as important sites for the cultural performance of memory. [End Page 307] The Emergence of Ethnohistory Prior to the rise of the journal Ethnohistory in 1954, folklorists and historians alike tended to...

I the J ew, I the B uddhist: Multi‐Religious Belonging As Inner Dialogue

I the Jew, I the Buddhist: Multi‐Religious Belonging As Inner Dialogue Mira Niculescu In the early 1990s, a delegation of Rabbis from many denominations (from Orthodox to Reform) flew to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama. They exchanged spiritual insights, discussed similarities and differences between Judaism and Buddhism, and shared “survival tips.” This interreligious dialogue was initiated by Marc Lieberman, a Buddhist Jew, who had founded an NGO for Tibetan people. Religion scholar and poet Rodger Kamenetz recounted the story of this meeting in his best seller, The Jew in the Lotus, to begin his exploration of the phenomenon of Jewish‐Buddhists, whom he called “Jubus.” Since then, the term Jubu has become a commonly used expression to designate the broad and eclectic array of Jews who practice Buddhism, and this term fails to represent the diversity of situations constituting this phenomenon. Yet academic attempts to grasp this phenomenon seem to have taken this term for granted as a new multi‐religious label. In this essay, I would like to propose an analysis that can express and address more accurately the lived realities of the so‐called Jewish‐Buddhists. I will show that in today's cultural context, it is more accurate to address this phenomenon in terms of an inner dialogue rather than of multi‐religious belonging. Leaving aside the fascinating history and reasons for the specific connection Jews have with Buddhism, which have been addressed elsewhere (Linzer , Vallely , Gez , Niculescu ), I will focus here on the performativity of this encounter: its parameters, and the way it actually “works” or rather is made to work. First, I redefine Judaism and Buddhism and explore their multi‐dimensionality in today's Western contemporary societies, as both religious and secular traditions. Second, I show how, regardless of whether or not Buddhism is considered a religion, it still provokes tensions and dilemmas for Jewish‐born individuals. Third, I offer a typology of inner dialogue between the reference points of Judaism and Buddhism. Judaism and Buddhism Two of the most frequently asked questions with respect to the Jubu phenomenon are: “What is a Jewish Buddhist?” and “Are Judaism and Buddhism compatible?” These questions require redefining Judaism and Buddhism, and examining the contemporary links between belonging, identity, and practice. Indeed in today's era of religious subjectivities, not only is it possible to practice without belonging or identifying to a tradition (for instance practicing yoga without identifying as a Hindu); it is also possible to belong and identify without practicing a religion (many contemporary Jews thus contradict Grace Davie's observation of the “Believing without belonging” phenomenon). Hence, today, practice and identification can be partial, selective, and construed in various ways. The minimal definition of a Jewish‐Buddhist designates a Jew by birth (religious or not) who practices Buddhism (whether or not he identifies with a Buddhist community). Who is a Jew and who is a Buddhist will therefore be my first question, although addressed very superficially in this essay. The first question is easier: A Jew according to halakha (Jewish law) is an individual born to a Jewish mother. Even Jews who live as Buddhist monastics are still considered Jews by this definition. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was given to a people called Israel in a divine epiphany on Mount Sinai through Moses the prophet. Before being a religion, Judaism appears as an inherited, permanent identity. The question of the definition of Buddhism has deep implications for the Jewish community: If it is a religion, “practicing it,” that is, meditating and following Buddhist principles, can be considered a transgression of the prohibition of idolatry or Avodah zarah, or the “worshiping of foreign deities.” This prohibition is fundamental to Judaism, as demonstrated by the second and third negative assertions of the Decalogue: A Jew is forbidden to “know other Gods” and to “make graven images” (and by extension bow to them). If Buddhism is not a religion, “practicing” should not be any more problematic than doing sports or psychotherapy. However, as we will see, as a tradition bearer with its own meaning and ritual system, Buddhism can still be viewed as contradicting Jewish precepts. Buddhism is ontologically not a religion. First...

Review: A Traveller's Life

It is rare to be able to trace a pattern between generations of artists and tradition bearers in this way and it is a great credit to Sheila Stewart that she should tackle what is at points a difficult personal story. She does so with great generosity, not least in supplying stories, songs and even melodies, which take us at apposite moments to the heart of the traditional matter. For that alone these volumes are worth the having, though this is only one interwoven strand in the enterprise.

The Storyteller, the Scribe, and a Missing Man: Hidden Influences from Printed Sources in the Gaelic Tales of Duncan and Neil MacDonald

The Scottish Gaelic tradition bearer Duncan MacDonald1 (1883-1954) was one of the most remarkable storytellers of twentieth-century Europe.2 He piqued the interest of a host of ethnologists in the later years of his life because of his considerable repertoire of traditional knowledge. They were especially interested in his ability to tell certain tales of his--particularly those with ties to older literary versions in manuscripts3--in a virtually identical fashion from recitation to recitation. During a period when scholars were admitting that the conservatism of Gaelic oral tradition had been perhaps exaggerated at times (see O Duilearga 1945), Duncan MacDonald's abilities were seen as an acquittal of the seanchaidh.4 It became clear that it was possible in certain cases for the surface forms of language, not just plot, to survive down through the ages in an almost unaltered form. MacDonald's genealogy (see Matheson 1977), with its ties to the hereditary poets and historians of Clann Domhnaill of Sleat, suggested that he was an approximation of the kind of professional Gaelic storyteller that would have been an institution in earlier times.