Once It’s Out There...

Once It’s Out There...

Out of my life I fashioned a fistful of words.
When I opened my hand, they flew away.
– Hyam Plutzik (1911–1962), American poet

In other words, once you get your text out there, you have precious little control over where it ends up.

Some time ago, I put up a post, together with pictures, about the tzitzit that I made for a friend’s small daughter. Recently, I found a site dedicated to issues of women and tzitzit. On quick investigation, I found that most of my blog post had been copied and pasted there (with proper credit, so I don’t mind on that score). On further investigation, I found that the site is run by so-called Messianics. I won’t even get into the inaccuracies about the wearing of tzitzit that I found there. Suffice it to say: it ain’t the real thing, folks.

I haven’t done anything about it and don’t intend to. People are free to believe what they choose. I just want to make it clear that I have nothing whatsoever to do with that site, nor do I support any so-called Messianic endeavors in any way, since the “Messianic” movement is really nothing more than a thinly-disguised attempt to persuade Jews to convert to Christianity (usually an evangelical branch).

(See Elisson’s excellent comment to this post for more clarification on why so-called Messianism is completely incompatible with Judaism.)

(In reference to the above epigraph: Many years ago, I kept a poster of the poem that contains these words on my wall. Its title is “On Hearing That My Poems Were Being Studied in a Distant Place,” and its full text may be found here.)