Whorf or no Whorf, words matter

[rhu]

There's a sign on the side of a house that I sometimes pass on my way to work. The sign reads "Mandatory Charity is a Contradiction in Terms."

Every time I see it, I wonder how you'd translate that into Hebrew. Because in Hebrew, the act of giving money to someone in need is not called "charity" (whose root is caritas, which can mean either "love" or "expensive"), it's called "justice" (i.e., tzedakah.)

And somehow, "Mandatory Justice" seems much less of a contradiction in terms than "Optional Justice" would be.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

That's kind of the point, to me. Mandatory charity is a contradiction in terms. Mandatory helping-the-poor-survive-decently is not a contradiction in terms. Describing helping the poor survive decently as "charity" rather than "justice" is a crime against ethics in its own right, IMO, for precisely that reason: it takes it out of the realm of the mandatory and puts it in the realm of the optional. Where I don't think it ever belonged in the first place.

[sethg]

לו שהנוצרים קראים "צ׳אריטי" אינו דינם

This sentence in English is difficult to translate into French. :-)