Words And Meanings: We Go Where Language Takes Us
Thursday, September 04, 2008 / AS
Words influence us in many ways. Words can move us, alter our attitudes, and change our behavior. Politicians and judges know that their power to define words legally is the power to shape the future, which is why lobbyists and lawyers are highly paid to contort language beyond its plain meaning.
Of course, it isn't only the legal definition of words that matters. Advertisers are constantly reshaping our understanding of words like free and new to give their products fresh luster. In the area of sustainability, just consider how the emergence of words like stakeholder and transparency have changed our understanding of how businesses ought to behave, or how the phrase corporate responsibility, by expanding to include everything from human rights to community impacts to diversity, has raised the bar for companies.
For many Jews, the word kosher conveys deep meaning, associated with ideas such as goodness, purity, and quality. For me, it evokes memories of cheese blintzes, frying onions, and of my grandmothers, both of whom kept kosher homes and for whom preparing and serving kosher food was a way of saying, "I love you, so eat."
And in America, the multicultural melting pot, the word kosher has entered the vocabulary of millions of non-Jews as a synonym for legitimate, honest, trustworthy--a kind of verbal Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
But the meanings of words can be fragile--as a recent story out of Postville, Iowa, demonstrates.
The nation's largest producer of kosher meat, a company called Agriprocessors located in Postville, has been cited for violating a slew of environmental and safety laws including, most egregiously, those prohibiting child labor. State investigators identified 57 under-age workers working at the company. The state labor commissioner said he had never seen anything like it in his thirty years in the field. Children as young as thirteen were reportedly wielding knives on the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week. Allegations have also been made of sexual harassment, shorted wages, favoritism and bribery in work assignments, inadequate safety practices, food contamination, and environmental violations.
Of course, we always need to acknowledge that those accused of such misdeeds are innocent until proven guilty. But if even a fraction of the allegations are true, it's a terribly sad story, one that suggests a number of significant lessons. Among other things, this episode should lay to rest the common notion that child labor is not an issue in this country. In the Jewish world, it has also rekindled a long-standing argument about the meaning of the word kosher.
Most traditionalists say that kosher means simply that a food product conforms to the technical requirements of kosher practice as defined by Jewish law, interpreted by rabbinic experts, and certified by specially-designated organizations. If a cut of meat, for example, is taken from a permissible animal that has been slaughtered, processed, and prepared under rabbinic supervision, then it is kosher--period.
Many progressives, on the other hand, argue that kosher should embody a broader set of standards, closer to the secular meaning of the word, including healthy and safe workplace conditions, legal compliance, and environmental protection, as well as more general concepts of corporate responsibility and fairness.
A third position has also emerged, something of a middle ground, called Hekhsher Tzedek ("justice certification" in Hebrew), which seeks to create a new kind of certification alongside the traditional kosher one. This "God Housekeeping Seal" (forgive me) would include standards for wages and benefits, worker safety, animal welfare, and environmental protection.
Although many agree with the spirit of Hekhsher Tzedek, I think its practical effect may be to delay or derail the necessary expansion of the definition of kosher. According to The New York Times, Rabbi Morris J. Allen, who is spearheading the Hekhsher Tzedek campaign, disavows any desire "to change ancient kosher dietary laws, which are traditionally administered by Orthodox Jews."
With all due respect, I think this is a big mistake. Words must evolve if our thinking and actions are to evolve. In striking down the practice of government-sanctioned racial segregation in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court observed that the phrase used to justify it, "separate but equal," was a contradiction in terms. As the historic decision noted, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
In effect, the court was declaring that the meaning of the word equal had to evolve to meet the demands of a higher standard of justice. Eventually, practically all Americans came to agree.
Perhaps the problem with the word kosher is that it's a relic of ancient religious practice now being applied in a modern, secular context--that of contemporary business practice. Relying on a separate vocabulary will almost always impede rather than hasten the transformation of mainstream thinking. We see this in the way the language of corporate social responsibility (CSR) tends to separate it from mainstream business thinking. CSR reports unintentionally provide an "alternative certification" separate from--and unequal to--the company's financial reporting.
Companies that claim to want sustainability as part of their DNA but who rely on CSR reporting as the chief mechanism are actually providing evidence that sustainability is not part of their daily business regimen but rather a separate way of thinking, relegated to a sustainability "ghetto" (to use another word with roots in Jewish history).
I think the time is ripe to challenge the traditionalists in both the Jewish and business practice by working towards one vocabulary, one way of measuring and reporting progress.
In time, this may entail redefining some basic business terms and concepts. Someday the word profit, for example, may expand to include, at least by inference, some indication of how the profit was made. (We already have phrases like blood diamond and dirty gold to describe illegitimate profits.) The simple word trade is developing a counterpart with ethical implications, fair trade. Economist Jeffrey Sachs suggests that we should think less about wealth and more about commonwealth. In all these cases, a change in thinking demands, or drives, a change in the very language of business.
Words shape thought; thoughts shape actions; and actions shape the future. Are profits made by exploiting workers or despoiling the environment kosher? It depends what you mean.
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Of course, it isn't only the legal definition of words that matters. Advertisers are constantly reshaping our understanding of words like free and new to give their products fresh luster. In the area of sustainability, just consider how the emergence of words like stakeholder and transparency have changed our understanding of how businesses ought to behave, or how the phrase corporate responsibility, by expanding to include everything from human rights to community impacts to diversity, has raised the bar for companies.
For many Jews, the word kosher conveys deep meaning, associated with ideas such as goodness, purity, and quality. For me, it evokes memories of cheese blintzes, frying onions, and of my grandmothers, both of whom kept kosher homes and for whom preparing and serving kosher food was a way of saying, "I love you, so eat."
And in America, the multicultural melting pot, the word kosher has entered the vocabulary of millions of non-Jews as a synonym for legitimate, honest, trustworthy--a kind of verbal Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
But the meanings of words can be fragile--as a recent story out of Postville, Iowa, demonstrates.
The nation's largest producer of kosher meat, a company called Agriprocessors located in Postville, has been cited for violating a slew of environmental and safety laws including, most egregiously, those prohibiting child labor. State investigators identified 57 under-age workers working at the company. The state labor commissioner said he had never seen anything like it in his thirty years in the field. Children as young as thirteen were reportedly wielding knives on the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week. Allegations have also been made of sexual harassment, shorted wages, favoritism and bribery in work assignments, inadequate safety practices, food contamination, and environmental violations.
Of course, we always need to acknowledge that those accused of such misdeeds are innocent until proven guilty. But if even a fraction of the allegations are true, it's a terribly sad story, one that suggests a number of significant lessons. Among other things, this episode should lay to rest the common notion that child labor is not an issue in this country. In the Jewish world, it has also rekindled a long-standing argument about the meaning of the word kosher.
Most traditionalists say that kosher means simply that a food product conforms to the technical requirements of kosher practice as defined by Jewish law, interpreted by rabbinic experts, and certified by specially-designated organizations. If a cut of meat, for example, is taken from a permissible animal that has been slaughtered, processed, and prepared under rabbinic supervision, then it is kosher--period.
Many progressives, on the other hand, argue that kosher should embody a broader set of standards, closer to the secular meaning of the word, including healthy and safe workplace conditions, legal compliance, and environmental protection, as well as more general concepts of corporate responsibility and fairness.
A third position has also emerged, something of a middle ground, called Hekhsher Tzedek ("justice certification" in Hebrew), which seeks to create a new kind of certification alongside the traditional kosher one. This "God Housekeeping Seal" (forgive me) would include standards for wages and benefits, worker safety, animal welfare, and environmental protection.
Although many agree with the spirit of Hekhsher Tzedek, I think its practical effect may be to delay or derail the necessary expansion of the definition of kosher. According to The New York Times, Rabbi Morris J. Allen, who is spearheading the Hekhsher Tzedek campaign, disavows any desire "to change ancient kosher dietary laws, which are traditionally administered by Orthodox Jews."
With all due respect, I think this is a big mistake. Words must evolve if our thinking and actions are to evolve. In striking down the practice of government-sanctioned racial segregation in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court observed that the phrase used to justify it, "separate but equal," was a contradiction in terms. As the historic decision noted, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
In effect, the court was declaring that the meaning of the word equal had to evolve to meet the demands of a higher standard of justice. Eventually, practically all Americans came to agree.
Perhaps the problem with the word kosher is that it's a relic of ancient religious practice now being applied in a modern, secular context--that of contemporary business practice. Relying on a separate vocabulary will almost always impede rather than hasten the transformation of mainstream thinking. We see this in the way the language of corporate social responsibility (CSR) tends to separate it from mainstream business thinking. CSR reports unintentionally provide an "alternative certification" separate from--and unequal to--the company's financial reporting.
Companies that claim to want sustainability as part of their DNA but who rely on CSR reporting as the chief mechanism are actually providing evidence that sustainability is not part of their daily business regimen but rather a separate way of thinking, relegated to a sustainability "ghetto" (to use another word with roots in Jewish history).
I think the time is ripe to challenge the traditionalists in both the Jewish and business practice by working towards one vocabulary, one way of measuring and reporting progress.
In time, this may entail redefining some basic business terms and concepts. Someday the word profit, for example, may expand to include, at least by inference, some indication of how the profit was made. (We already have phrases like blood diamond and dirty gold to describe illegitimate profits.) The simple word trade is developing a counterpart with ethical implications, fair trade. Economist Jeffrey Sachs suggests that we should think less about wealth and more about commonwealth. In all these cases, a change in thinking demands, or drives, a change in the very language of business.
Words shape thought; thoughts shape actions; and actions shape the future. Are profits made by exploiting workers or despoiling the environment kosher? It depends what you mean.
Labels: Agriprocessors, kosher, Personal Musings, sustainability
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