Serving in the Seder Cultural Relativity

Mar 10, 2021, 10:27 AM

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While the answers to four famous questions in the haggadah’s first text,

the ma nishtanah, may be unpersuasive to most persons who’re perplexed,

the fact they are given to four sons reflects a sensitivity

to an as yet quite invented doctrine, “cultural relativity.”

After reading the review: ‘The Reinvention of Humanity: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Remade Race, Sex and Gender’ by Charles King Francis Gooding. LRB, 3/4/21.

About the Author

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored "Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel." He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.