"Lost In Translation" by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

I have read about French-speaking Jews in the Maghreb. One of whom, a French academic named Jacques Derrida, inspired mixed discussions on the nature of language.

I also knew a colleague named Michelle Valens, a French teacher who may still be teaching in  South Gate. She was a capable instructor who brought a wealth of experience with her native language, although she had not lived in France or her native Tunisia for some time.

Then I read Rabbi Daniel Bouskila's personal reflection in "The Jewish Journal". A Moroccan Jew who grew up in Los Angeles, this Rabbi would recite the Passover ceremony in Arabic, a unique experience since many Jews, and Gentiles, equate Arabic with the language of the "enemy".

Derrida also wrote of a discriminatory phenomenon among groups who spoke different languages. Citing this limiting label as "the monolingualism of the Other", Derrida argued that marginalized groups, enemy sects, are treated as if they only speak one language, as if the richness of cultural awareness is foreign to a community that has been relegated to secondary status. Rabbi Bouskila's reflection on growing up in a multilingual household, one that recited a revered tradition in a different language, demonstrates that spiritual growth, practice, and fidelity transcends human language. True, the inspired language of the Hebrews, in which the Tanach is written, reveals a greater wealth than an Arabic translation,  but the personal communion that everyone of us has with the language and communication of our faith speaks more deeply to everyone of us.

For those who revere both Old and New Testaments, the King James Translation offers a supernatural authority in its archaisms, many of which have crept into the daily language of modern English speakers. However, the distant authority of the King James Bible can impress a reader with a conception of God as a pious pontificator beyond our scope or presence. Yet the same God who sent His Son to die for us also gave us His Holy Spirit, that God could live and move within His creation. One way that believers instill the greater glory of God's Word in their lives includes putting the words of the Bible into their own words. The meaning does not change, the spirit of the words has not escaped the reader, but a believer now speaks to God in his own language, so to speak, as opposed to talking at God using someone else's script.

This process of taking the Word and putting it into one's own words reminds me of the warm practice in Rabbi Daniel's family, in which religious ceremonies, although initially written in Hebrew, are spoken and shared in their native  Arabic.

"Sounds -- and feels -- so much better in the original." I believe that God wants His Word to be as personal to us as possible, to shape our thinking, to instruct our believing, and to sanctify our speaking. What better way than to take the meanings of God's Word and render them in one's daily language?

For believers, therefore, there can never be a monolingualism, we do not have to suffer with God being so wholly Other, that we cannot receive  His love, His presence, or His blessings in our lives.