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From: R. Halevi
Subject: Token naming and cultural bias
Date: 26 Av 5782
A token is not an instruction. It is a label.
And yet labels have histories.
The Rema, in his glosses on Shulchan Aruch, added Ashkenazi practice to what was a Sephardi text. Within a generation, the glosses were treated as equally authoritative. Within two generations, in many communities, they were treated as primary. The original text became the minority view.
This is how norms propagate. Not through mandate but through assumption. The token SHUL does not require anyone to use Yiddish. But it establishes Yiddish as the baseline from which other terms deviate.
Have we consulted with anyone about whether this pattern concerns them?
—Dov Halevi
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