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United States · United StatesQuestion: Dear friends of mine are planning their wedding and have asked me to participate. They are both Jewish, but plan to incorporate various Hindu and Native American traditions into the ceremony simply because they find them beautiful. This feels like cultural appropriation, which I oppose. Is there an ethical problem with this?Let me start by saying that I’m a former religious studies major who routinely shares wisdom from diverse traditi…Read Article
Ask the Ethicist: Is Cultural Appropriation OK?
Catholic Church · GazaIt seems I had to come to Ireland to be reintroduced to the prophet Elijah.For more than a week this summer, I have been on retreat at a Catholic hermitage in County Sligo run by a tiny community of Carmelite sisters and brothers. For my time off to be truly a retreat, I needed some distance from Jewish institutions where I would inevitably feel like I was in some way on duty. That said, I am always a Jew, and being the first rabbi to take a ret…Read Article
The Elijah I Want
New York City · New YorkRaphael Lemkin was a Polish-American lawyer and activist today best known for coining the term “genocide” and leading the charge to have it enshrined in international law as a punishable crime under the 1951 Genocide Convention. Though the convention has not prevented genocides from being perpetrated, Lemkin was singularly responsible for providing the only legal basis on which those who commit them can be punished. Born 1900, Lemkin was raised …Read Article
