Peevey thingy

[mamadeb]

Is it wrong of me to be bothered by the whole Prayer Shawl thing?



Not the concept, per se, except that I'd imagine that anything made for someone you loved (in whatever manner) would be made with good thoughts for the recipient, and so I can't see why you'd need an organization. But others might feel differently about that, or like that it's part of a whole thing, and so that's not my problem.

It's the name. It's that prayer shawls in Judaism have been around forever (at least a thousand years, if not more). It's that they have a specific role to play in Jewish religious observance and prayer. They are considered sacred objects, and those who wear them are supposed to behave in a proper manner while wearing them.

And while this usage doesn't exactly *cheapen* the term, it changes it from something very Jewish and holy to to us to something...else.

I know terms change and meanings change, and I'm sure the ladies who invented the concept thought they were coming up with an original name, but I keep reading things about "knitting a prayer shawl for Aunt Martha to wear to church", and my mind breaks for *so* many reasons. And, anyway, the original meaning of the phrase is still around and still in use.

I don't know. "Prayer Wraps." "Good Thoughts Shawls." "Love Shawls." Something else.

Edit: I think it's that, unlike most people, I did grow up with the preferred term being "prayer shawls."

Comments

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

It's... a little weird, certainly. Special garments for prayer are pretty common across religious traditions, and render the experience more meaningful for plenty of people (including me). So it doesn't surprise me that some variants of Protestant Christianity, which developed by rejecting many of the medieval Church's outward trappings of faith (a tallit was a type of stola before it was a type of prayer shawl, and where priests' stoles came from is rather unclear), have become interested in creating new, um, prayer accessories. But "prayer shawl" is a term that's used in contemporary English primarily to translate tallit, and it strikes me as unfortunate that nobody in this group would realize, or acknowledge, the extent to which they're borrowing just a bit from Judaism. (I mean, Jesus kvetches about Pharisees showing off their extra-long tzitzit in the Gospel of Matthew, so this could very legitimately come up even in a New-Testament-only Bible study.)

At least nobody's started referring to their WWJD jewelry as phylacteries. Uh, I hope. ;)

[sethg]

Is the word "phylacteries" used to describe, umm, religious accessories used in any religion other than Judaism? (The artifact from the back pages of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide doesn't count. :-)

[ginamariewade.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. I had never heard the word before I started learning about Judaism.
In the book I was looking at, the definition of "phylacteries" was "tefillin" and the definition of "tefillin" was "phylacteries," and there was a little picture of a set without the person in them (so to speak) and I could not figure out what they were for.
And then when I saw them in action, I was even more mystified. What was in the little box?
My friend said "It's sort of like a mezuzuah on your head and hand." And he showed me the interior of the mezuzah at his dad's house. And then I kind of got it.