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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Better alternatives:

Baby Yoda is my kindred spirit.
Pistachio ice cream is my raison d’être.
I’ve flipped over that movie; it is my new BFF.
That piano-playing cat is my daemon.[/quote]

I know I’d feel I strange by someone making beautiful Torah and yarmulke dresses, but the problem with the war on cultural appropriation is that everything we do is appropriated.

“Kindred spirit” is Old English. I’m a non-English Jew, so I’m appropriating that, and all of English.

“Raison d’etre” is from French philosophers. I don’t even know how to type the right kind of E to spell it properly.

“BFF” would be me appropriating a phrase from people who are much you get than me but older than my son.

“Daemon” is an appropriation from the ancient Greek religion. Maybe that appropriation would be as offensive to a follower of Zeus as use if “spirit animal” is to a Native American.

And do all Native American religions have spirit animals, or just some? I’m trying to look into that question quickly, and people accusing users of the term of cultural appropriation seem to be lumping a lot of Native American religions together; failing to acknowledge that Western European people’s have old spirit animal traditions; and assuming as a given that the Celtic and Norse traditions are all white Americans’ standard traditions.

Maybe I’d draw the line at strange, poorly researched uses of objects that people think of as sacred. I don’t want to see crucifixes see as coat racks, for example. But I think we should be pretty forgiving about appropriations of, and transformations of, words and ideas. Otherwise, how can most of us justify using English? I have no cultural right to say “goodbye” or do things on Woden’s day, but no one living person in my family has used Yiddish as a living language. I have to culturally appropriate to communicate anything more complicated than hunger and thirst. 
[/quote]

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