“DRGs and d’varim” is going to be the tag and headline I put on posts where you can expect to find references to both FFXIV stuff and real-world spirituality/philosophy stuff (likely specifically Judaism, hence the name).[*]
And this introductory post is to volunteer a little background on why exactly, I want to do that. Not to justify my desire to ramble, but to contextualize my intentions.
I think it’s super cool that humans use every tool at our disposal to engage the universe. I think that myths, epic fantasy, and fiction are a different manifestation of the same curiosities and concerns that we also address through science and philosophy. They’re all part of our way of understanding and relating to the universe and each other. They’re both reflections of our beliefs and priorities.
I know this isn’t like a hot take. I just think it’s neat!
And it just so happens that one of the larger-than-life stories I spend most of my time thinking about is FFXIV. And it just so happens that I’m Jewish and spend a lot of time learning through a Jewish lens. I love both of those things about myself, and I’m excited to have made a place where I can yammer about them here.
Actually, here’s a great example: midrash.
Midrash (analogous to “exposition” or “ investigation”) commonly refers to a practice of rabbinic commentary that dates back to around 400 CE. It’s not unusual for “midrash” to refer to the process by which the commentary is made, the resulting piece of commentary, and sometimes a specific collection of some of those commentaries.
See, Tanakh is terse. It tends to be short on details--about motivation, about chronology, about a lot of things. So in order to engage with the text more deeply, some rabbis began to ask things like…
“So what if, in between these two verses, this other thing had happened and it just didn’t get written down?”
“Hey these two things don’t line up. What could have happened that we don’t know about that WOULD make them line up?”
“Sure he said [X], but did he mean it like this or like that? Or what if he only said it because he was [scared/hurt/etc]?”
“Why would God do that?”
And after asking those questions, the rabbis just started writing down what they thought the answer might be. Thus, midrash was born.
Midrash is amazing. Midrash is a game. Midrash is a dance. It’s the love and frustration of people who have devoted SO MUCH of their lives and thoughts to a text, to understanding it and wanting to get everything they can out of it. It’s a desire to understand so deep that it pushes you to create new things, so you can hold them up like mirrors to see the original from a new angle.
Midrash is rabbinic fanfic.
For 1600+ years, rabbis have been using the same type of text interrogation and play, drawing similar distinctions between canon and headcanon and fanon, as we use with beloved media. That's rad as hell! And I think it’s because beloved media and Torah (and other forms of spirituality/religion/cultural ritual/etc) are really just about being human--about existing as an entity with any amount of autonomy and understanding in the world.
Brief disclaimers:
- You don’t need to be Jewish to engage with these posts! It is ok to not know things but be interested in joining the conversation. Other perspectives and pointing out similarities or contrasts with other traditions is very very welcome!
- I’m delighted to share something that means a lot to me! I engage with this because I think it’s cool as fuck and I wanna share that. This is not proselytizing, this is not intended to be proselytizing, and by and large we take a relatively dim view of proselytizing as a concept.
- I’m not arguing that any of my interpretations (of FFXIV or Jewish texts/etc) are the Right Ones or the only ones or the best ones. Just sharing stuff I think is cool.
- I don't have any particular interest in "exporting" Judaism to FFXIV or anything along those or reversed lines.
- I am not trying to conflate religion and a videogame story, and I mean disrespect to neither
[*] D'varim, which often gets translated as "words" and "things," is the plural of d'var. D'var, in addition to meaning "word" (or "utterance" perhaps) and "thing," is also commonly used to refer to prepared remarks or speeches, including sermons. Divrei Torah are "(my) words (of/about) Torah." (The fifth book of the Torah is called D'varim (Deuteronomy, by Greek naming), because the books and portions of Torah take their name from unique words at the beginning of their passages. D'varim begins with "These are the [things/words] Moses said," making "things/words" the first unique word, making D'varim the title of the book.)