The Rebirth of Hebrew

I have at times been critical of the usual story of the rebirth ofHebrew as a spoken language (last time here). Usually they focus on thefactthat the ancient Hebrew language lacked vocabulary for many aspects ofmodern life, and onthe heroic story of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who discovered and inventedmany of the missing terms, and raised the firstHebrew-speaking child in 2000 years. My instinctive criticism has beenbased on asingle observation: it is extremely difficult for an adult to learn aforeign language, and it almost never happens that a person will feelcompletely comfortable speaking a language acquired in adulthood. Andyet, millions of Jews did exactly that. For no practical reason, theyabandoned their mother tongues for Hebrew – a language, at the time, spoken bynobody. 

This is the real story of the rebirth of Hebrew: that millions ofpeople were persuaded to do this highly unnatural act. It is indeed amiracle (at least, if you will, in thesense of a seemingly highly unlikely event) that millions of Jewssuddenly began speaking a “dead” language. It is an event unique inhuman history, and it is very surprising to me that it has been solittle studied with any seriousness.

Before I get into what I contend is the real story, let me review the usual one (all ofwhich is true, by the way, just not as interesting). It goes likethis: Hebrew was kept alive for thousands of years after it ceased tobe spoken, as a language of scholarship and ritual, through the loveof the Jewish people. Toward the end of the 19th century, Jews began toleave their ghettos and participate in modern life. This wasaccompanied by a flourishing of the Hebrew language, such as hadn’tbeen seen since the Golden Era of Spain, in which Jews wrote in Hebrewabout all aspects of life. Eliezer Ben Yehuda moved to the Land ofIsrael, then ruled by the Turks (the region was not yet calledPalestine – that name would be be applied by the British only afterWorld War I) and endeavored to bring about the rebirth of Hebrew as aspokenlanguage. To this end, he compiled a dictionary of 500,000 items,rediscovering Hebrew’s lost vocabulary, and inventing hundreds of newterms. He also raised the first Hebrew-speaking family. Othersfollowed his lead, and spoken Hebrew was reborn.

While very nice, no part of this story is unique, except the part thatis left unexplained. There are many, many unspoken languages that have been kept alive over long periods of timeas literary or ritual languages, among them: Latin, Ancient Greek, Coptic, Ge’ez, Sanskrit, Avestan,Classical Arabic (as different from modern dialects as Latin is toItalian), and Classical Chinese– none of them have been revived as a spoken language. On the otherhand, many unwritten dialects have been elevated to written languages:At the time of the rebirth ofHebrew, ethnic minorities around the world were rediscovering theiridentities, and many spoke languages that lacked vocabulary for modernlife. Ben Yehuda’s work was certainly important for the revival ofHebrew, and he is justifiably celebrated, but similar thingshappened in Czech, Modern Greek, Finnish, and many other languages.Unexplained: How were millionsof ordinary Jews convinced to abandon their mother tongues?

I have finally discovered the answer, the missing link to the story. On the recommendation of Amritas, I ordered a copy of Language In Time of Revolution by Benjamin Harshav.It is not an easy read. It’s written in a dry and academic style, so for lack of time and energy I readonly the second of its three parts, which deals directly with the rebirth of Hebrew. (The first part deals with thehistorical background, and thethird with Harshav’s translations of primary sources.)

In the last decades of Turkish rule of what would become Israel (atthe time there was no one name that referred to the whole area), thelanguage of government wasTurkish, the peasants spoke the local dialect of Arabic (which even tothis day is not written), the Jews spoke various languages, especiallyArabic and Yiddish, and education, such as it was, was mostly conductedin French and German. It was in this milieu that small groups of highlymotivated Jews founded new communitiesof like-minded peoplewith the specific purpose of creating a Jewish community that wouldembody their ideals, one of which was to speak Hebrew. The newcommunities included thecity of Tel Aviv, numerous small kibbutzim, and other agriculturalcommunities. It isimportant to understand that these were small self-selected groups: they did something that the vast majority are unwilling, or unable, to do.

It was within this small, self-selected population that Hebrew wasreborn as a spoken language. 

But it is not the end of the story: So asmall group of isolated, highly motivated, energetic people managed torevitalize Hebrew. How, then, did their numbers grow to the millionsthat they are today? 

After World War I, Turkey was defeated, and its empire divided between France and Britain. The League of Nations crafted the British Mandate to, among other things, “secure the establishment of the Jewish nationalhome” in Palestine, and Jews began to organize themselves into the politywhich was to become Israel. (Actually, even in Turkish times thevarious religious groups had a certain degree of autonomy, in what wascalled the millet system,which was preserved under the British Mandate, and persists in Israelto this day.) The Palestinian Jews were heterogeneous – religiously,politically, and linguistically. The dominant languages among themwere Arabic and Yiddish, neither of which were used for intellectualpurposes.Indeed, the intellectual languages had been French and German, but wereabout to be superseded by English. This state of diversity and flux wasprobably a contributing factor to the success of Hebrew, but was not,in my opinion, the main one, especially considering the fact thatalmost all Hebrew speakers at the time were native speakers of Yiddish,which could easily have followed the path of development of languagessuch as Czech. The reason Hebrew succeeded: The same,self-selected, group that pioneered the revitalization of Hebrew alsobecame the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine.

And from then on, we are backto ordinary sociolinguistic processes. It has happened many, many timesthat a language spoken by a small but important group of peoplehas supplanted a much more widely-spoken language. To name just a fewinstances from historical times (many more can be reconstructed fromlinguistic evidence): Latin in the western Mediterranean, Greek in theeastern Mediterranean, Arabic in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and NorthAfrica, Hungarian in Hungary, English in Ireland. In Palestine, at thebeginning of the 20th century, that language was Hebrew.

ADDENDUM: At the end of book 2, Harshav examines the question ofwhether modern He
brew is really a “European” language. While he doesn’tgo quite so far as to say that it is, he seems to think that it hasbeen heavily Europeanized. I take issue with this claim. First of all,a speaker of modern Hebrew can understand the language of the Bibleabout as easily as a speaker of modern English can understand its KingJames translation, and Mishnaic (Talmudic) Hebrew is about as closeto modern Hebrew as 17th or 18th-century English is to the modernlanguage. That’s pretty close, I would say. Harshav quotes a typicalparagraph from a newspaper, and has this to say about it:

1. International words: kilometer, television, Antarctica, July, cabinet, Africa, NBC.

2. New Hebrew words for international terms: race, [television]networks, missile, launched, report, nuclear weapons, Minister of Tradeand Industry, area (in the sense of geographical area), the UnitedStates.

3. Phrases that represent Euro-American concepts: “hasbroadcast information stating that,” “a certain place,” “standardversion,” “denied reports,” “nuclear weapons,” “fifth of July,” “Israelwill not be the first,” “confined himself to stating the standardversion”

4. The microsyntax, concerning contiguous words, or immediateconstituents, is essentially Hebrew: the coordination of verb and noun;the use of the definite article, prepositions, and connectives; thegenitive phrases. Yet, the macrosyntax is European: the sentence in thefirst paragraph accumulates five stages of states of affairs, whichcould not be done in the syntax of traditional texts.

I find points 1-3 very odd. How can you talk about thingsthat go on in the modern world without having words for them? Are thosewords intrinsically Euro-American because the objects and concepts theyrefer to were mostly invented by Euro-Americans? He even admits inthe next paragraph that: “the roots of most of the words are Hebrew or quasi-Hebrew”!Point 4 is more interesting, it is the point I was addressing in thelinkabove. Itseems to me that the major transformation in the (written) language wasnot from Semitic toEuropean, but from a language meant to be spoken to a language meant tobe read. The Mishnaictexts were transmitted orally before they were written down, and their”macrosyntax”reflects that. A similar observation can be made in English whencomparing the works of Chaucer (which were meant to be read aloud) tomodern texts. For that matter, even today a well-written speech willhavesimplified sentence structure. Would you say that the language ofChaucer and Reagan is really Semitic? It should be pointed out that allthis Europeanmacrosyntax is achieved in Hebrew with the ancient set of particles, inotherwords the difference is one of degree not kind: no new kind of sentencestructurehas been invented. Indeed, the Hebrew of Maimonides(1135-1204), who was a native Arabic (Semitic language)speaker,has a macrosyntax not far from the modern idiom. Is complex sentencestructure a European characteristic or simply a modern one? Put anotherway, does a reading (as opposed to listening) audience inevitably leadto more complex sentence structure? I would be interested in data fromother languages.

(Cross-posted at Rishon Rishon.)

Posted by David Boxenhorn at 12:08 AM

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Empire (Rome that is, though really it is the Principate)

ABC unveils a miniseries, Empire, about the rise of Augustus tonight (6 parts). Normally I don’t watch the toob anymore, but I might check this out, the review in The New York Times suggests that the series is to ancient Rome what Taco Bell is to Mexican food. But hey, are you going to Oaxaca to get some authentic mole anytime soon? And the The New York Times piece suggests that HBO is going to be presenting your with more authentic sword and sandal fare this fall….

Posted by razib at 10:57 PM

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Iranian secularism?

Free Inquiry1 has two articles online, The Next Secular Revolution? and A Secular Student in Tehran Committed to Change, highlighting the situation for secularism in Iran.2 The timing is a bit off, juxtaposed against the recent victory of the religious conservative in the Iranian elections, but to some extent this is probably the result of disengagement of much of the youth electorate from politics. Two points struck me about the first article, first, it refers to burnings of Korans3 during Tchahr Shanbe Souri, the traditional Persian fire festival, and second, one of the figures profiled offers that many Iranians are switching from their Muslim names (including Mohammed) to Persian ones. This heterodoxy jives with reports that I read in the mid-to-late 1990s that textbooks about “Eastern” religions sold very well in Iranian college bookstores, indicating that students were buying them for their personal edification as opposed to just for class requirements. A shift toward a more “Persian” (quotes because only 60% of Iranians speak Farsi as their native language) identity seems a common variation of a regular cross-cultural theme, that is, nationalists and dissidents emphasizing one aspect of their history and identity at the expensive of another.

This is not to suggest that Iran is going to be run by secularists anytime soon, only a small minority of Iranians will embrace secular humanism. But, a public and vigorous rationalist-secularist movement can be influential, even in an overwhelmingly religious society. India is a good model for this, it has an active rationalist society which challenges “God-men”4 and many prominent figures have been religiously skeptical (Nehru was an agnostic by profession). Though certainly I think there are legitimate qualms with secularism in terms of how it has been applied in India,5 I still hold that it has been a positive force when judged in light of the withering of secularism in next door Pakistan.6 In many Muslim nations there are many secular humanists in the private domain, but unlike India or Western nations, these individuals are not a public force because of strong social sanctions against espousal of beliefs which seem inimical to Islam in the public domain.7 I think the breaking of this taboo is an important sign of cultural maturity, or at least a move toward “modernity” (as is the freedom to convert to other religions). The West made this shift around 1800, as isolated mavericks like Frederick the Great were succeeded by mass anti-clerical movements.

[notes below]

1 – The house magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism.

2 – The print edition has an interview with Michael Ledeen by Ibn Warraq.

3 – I am normally amenable to pedantic spellings, but on the Koran vs. Qur’an controversy I go old school because the latter transliteration is meant to convey sounds that don’t exist in English and is confusing. Not to be offensive, but it reminds me of some names you see in fantasy books for Elves, with apostrophes thrown in for exotic effect.

4 – The aims are ecumenically antogonistic, the rationalists disrupt and challenge Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Of course the overwhelming majority of Indians are credulous and superstitious peasants nonetheless, but the rationalists bear witness to modern sentiments and an ancient tradition of skepticism (the Carvakas).

5 – I tend to agree with the contention that it has not been evenhanded, being more antagonistic toward majoritarian religious sentiments but tolerant of minoritarian prejudices.

6 – Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was I believe as much a Muslim as Nehru was a Hindu. That is, both were personally disinclined toward any religious enthusiasm, but they were leaders of the Muslim and Hindu “nations” respectively.

7 – Heterodox and skeptical thinkers are not unknown in Islamic civilization. The blind poet of al Maari is one such example, but artists are different than public intellectuals in the amount of indulgence they might receive from the powers that be. Ibn Rushd, from what I know, did not publicize his most radical philosophical conclusions which challenged Islamic orthodoxy (here I go with the Arabic spelling because it seems reasonable in terms of the transliteration, and “Averroes” is greatly deviated from the native form. Additionally, unlike Confucius, Ibn Rushd is obscure enough to the lay audience that one can discard the Latinized form).

Posted by razib at 11:57 PM

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Eurasian faces….

This Sydney Morning Herald piece summarizes a paper that asserts that:

…In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces.

If you read the full paper (23 pages of PDF, if you don’t have access to this paper use this link) you will note that they recruited Eurasian individuals for these experiments, that is, a real population instead of just a hypothetical composite created from the Asian and Caucasian test subjects.

The authors suggest that “attractiveness” (in this case for “average” face composites) is not based on “prototypical” features since Caucasians and Asians preferred Eurasian faces, which would not be “prototypical” of their own population. Instead, they posit that “health” is being signalled. It all seems a bit thin to me, and the authors admit that preference for “Eurasians” could not have evolved in any EEA, since by definition Asians and Caucasians would have been shaped by selection forces in a different environment and population. As for the argument about heterozygosity…my impression is that biologists have had a hard time finding genuine heterozygote advantage in the natural world.1 Of course, Armand Leroi has recently been contending that interracial individuals will mask deleterious recessive traits, but that presupposes a high level of genetic load in the source populations. At this point, I think we should look to the flies and mice before assuming too much about humans.2

Update: Hm…well, I was pointed to this paper that argues that males who are heterozygous on MHC loci are more facially attractive than not:

…Here, we show that heterozygosity at three key loci in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is associated with facial attractiveness: Faces of men who are heterozygous at all three loci are judged more attractive by women than faces of men who are homozygous at one or more of these loci. MHC genes code for proteins involved in immune response….This is very suggestive, though past research has offered conflicting results on female preference of MHC profiles.3 I stated earlier that there haven’t been enough finds of heterozygote advantage in nature for biologists to be able to explain the extent of polymorphism within populations, but of course since much of the lab research is done on flies and worms it might not be totally relevant to humans. Only higher vertebrates have adaptive immune systems, so the MHC genes and their immune phenotype might not fall within expectation.

Addendum: I assume readers will play by the maxim: my aesthetic preferences aren’t everyone’s aesthetic preferences, and arguments from personal incredulity or deep introspection are frowned upon. I also suggest you read the paper if you are going to comment on it.

1 – This is why William Hamilton appealed to long term frequency dependent effects, while some theorists are looking to synergistic epistasis as the theoretical underpinning for the ubiquity of sex in complex organisms.

2 – The beauty of multiracial individuals is probably somewhat in vogue in the cultural zeitgeist right now, but let us recall that a century ago mixed individuals were assumed to be maladapted and unfit mongrels, so perceptions can change based on cultural preconceptions.

3 – That research is not totally orthogonal, if females prefer similar MHC profiles than their children are more likely to be homozygous at a locus than if they prefer dissimilar MHC profiles.

Posted by razib at 08:49 PM

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Endless Forms not so important….

Jerry Coyne, coauthor of Speciation, has a mildly negative review of Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful (my short take here) up at Nature. Coyne states that, “…but its faintly self-congratulatory message – that the most important problems in understanding the evolution of development have been solved – left me feeling uncomfortable.” He goes on to offer:

…But the underlying statistics are deceptive; even a 1% difference in DNA sequence implies a substantial difference in protein sequence. We now know that humans and chimps have different amino-acid sequences in at least 55% of their proteins, a figure that rises to 95% for humans and mice. Thus we can’t exclude protein-sequence evolution as an important reason why we lack whiskers and tails.

If you read this weblog you know that glib generalizations based on a commonly used figure in the literature can be deceptive. I personally believe, from my reading of Carroll’s book, that Coyne has taken his message the wrong way. Carroll seems to be arguing that gene regulation (that is, variable expression) has been the most important neglected factor in understanding the evolution of development. Certainly new technology for assaying gene expression has blown the lid off of many of the limitations on collecting enough data. Additionally, any biologist who writes for a lay audience seems to get a bit carried away and want to package their message as the One Great Truth. Both Coyne and Carroll are certainly correct to some extent, and I doubt that the viewpoint of either one will carry the day in the end. I suspect that the importance of gene duplication, alternative regulation, and direct nonsynonymous changes to the DNA sequence will be measured by the factor which looms largest in the uniqueness of humanity, that is, what separates us from the chimpanzees.1

Evolgen has more.

1 – Regional Patterns of Gene Expression in Human and Chimpanzee Brains, Genome Res. 2004 Aug;14(8):1462-73.

Posted by razib at 12:50 PM

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"Boomhauer!"

Great article about King of the Hill in The New York Times Magazine, the only point where I would demur is that the “Hank Hills” of the world could ever be part of a Democratic coalition again. The red-meat-eating, Wal-Mart shopping and gun-owning lifestyle induces such a visceral reaction (and vice versa) among a certain segment of the core Democratic electorate that I don’t know if an alliance could get beyond the emotional aversion.

Posted by razib at 04:22 PM

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Brown and out? (so I thought)

An, another story in The New York Times about the craze in India to get into an I.I.T….

The opening paragraphs:

ANUPAM KUMAR, 17, is the eldest son of a scooter-rickshaw driver. He lives in a three-room house made of bricks and mortar and a hot tin roof, where water rarely comes out of the tap and the electricity is off more than on…….”It’s becoming very important to explore other planets because this planet is becoming too polluted,” he said with deadly seriousness…His mother, Sudha Devi, a savvy woman with a 6th-grade education, cooled him with a palm-frond fan.

His father, Srikrishna Jaiswal, who made it through 10th grade, flashed a bemused smile. “He has high-level aims,” he said.

…Of 198,059 Indians who took the rigorous admissions tests in 2005, 3,890 got in, an acceptance rate of under 2 percent….

My thought was of course that it is a story of a poor boy who has unrealistic ambitions, but, of course, 1 billion people, so you have a whole array of lives to choose from:

[On June 16, sitting at his tutor’s house, Anupam learned the results. He made it into the institutes, with a rank of 2,299. Classes start in mid-July.]

Good for him! Unfortunately, stories like these mask the quantitative reality that 40% of Indians are illiterate (versus 10% of Chinese, even taking into account Communist tendencies toward exaggerating social statistics, which post-socialist India probably shares, it is a big chasm). You can see state-by-state literacy rates if you are curious about variation. I can offer a personal anecdote which I think tangentially relates to this issue of an enormous range in South Asia between bestial destitution and intellectual ambition. I only recently learned that the eminent physicist Satyendra Nath Bose was a lecturer at Dhaka University between 1921-1945. He is of course the gentleman for whom bosons are named after (You’ve probably heard of the “Higgs boson”). Now, I have spent some time on the grounds of Dhaka University as I have or have had many relatives associated with that institution as students, faculty or staff. My earliest memories are of the neighborhoods around the campus, and last spring I took in the buildings, smelled the air and stepped past the wretches curled up outside of its gates. It is frankly unfathomable to me that a man who collaborated with Einstein could have been embedded in environs so permeated with a scarcity of basic human necessities. It is romantic fodder for biographers and newspaper articles, but is a sad commentary that genius that could span continents could affect little change nearby.

Posted by razib at 02:35 AM

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No surprises….

This story that offers that prostitution is legal in Turkey prompted me to survey the legal status of prostitution in nations which are members of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Well, Turkey is an exception, and since I used the The World Sex Guide (not work friendly!) there was little data on many countries without much sex tourism.

NationProstitution Status
Afghanistan*
Albaniade jure illegal
Algeria*
AZERBAIJAN*
BAHRAINIllegal
BANGLADESHde jure illegal
BENIN*
BRUNEI-DARUSSALAM*
BURKINA-FASO*
CAMEROON*
CHAD*
COMOROS*
DJIBOUTI*
EGYPTIllegal
GABON*
GUINEA*
GUINEA-BISSAU*
GUYANA*
INDONESIAde jure illegal
IRAN*
IRAQ*
JORDAN*
KAZAKHSTANIllegal
KUWAIT*
KYRGHYZSTAN*
LEBANON*
LIBYA 
MALAYSIA*
MALDIVES*
MALI*
MAURITANIA*
MOROCCO*
MOZAMBIQUE*
NIGER*
NIGERIAde jure illegal
OMAN*
PAKISTANIllegal
QATAR*
SAUDI ARABIA*
SENEGAL*
SIERRA LEONE*
SOMALIA*
SUDAN*
SURINAMELegal
SYRIA*
TAJIKISTAN*
TOGO*
TUNISIA*
TURKEYLegal
TURKMENISTAN*
UGANDA*
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES*
UZBEKISTAN*
YEMEN*
COTE D’IVOIRE*
  

Posted by razib at 09:46 PM

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God and the doctors

Religious Characteristics of U.S. Physicians:

The response rate was 63%…Compared with the general population, physicians are more likely to be affiliated with religions that are underrepresented in the United States, less likely to say they try to carry their religious beliefs over into all other dealings in life (58% vs 73%), twice as likely to consider themselves spiritual but not religious (20% vs 9%), and twice as likely to cope with major problems in life without relying on God (61% vs 29%).

The Seattle Times has a detailed article and an informative table. The table offers the following denominational data (religion, frequency in survey respondents, frequency in general population): Protestant (38.8/54.7), Catholic (21.7/26.7), Jewish (14.1/1.9), None (10.6/13.3), Hindu (5.3/0.2), Muslim (2.7/0.5), Orthodox (2.2/0.5), Mormon (1.7/0.4), Other (1.8/1.6).

The large number of Jews is no surprise to anyone, while Hindus and a great portion of the Muslim segmant are basically proxies for the brown presence in the medical profession. The high number of Buddhists is probably the tip of the iceberg for the number of East Asians (since most East Asians in the USA aren’t Buddhist, and are most likely to be Christian with a large non-religious minority, see Kosmin et al.). I am a bit perplexed by the Orthodox number, but I do recall that various groups like Greeks who fall under this category have done well for themselves, and their urban orientation might mean they are more likely to enter into professions.

In any case, some readers might be surprised at the relatively high rates of institutional religiosity as measured by affiliation and attendance coupled with somewhat less than typical personalized vigor and engagement (that is, doctors are more likely to go to church, but less likely to believe in God or an afterlife). Don’t be, sociologists of religion like Rodney Stark have been pointing out for decades that there is often a strong positive correlation between socioeconomic status and affiliation with institutional religion. To be succinct, affiliation with a local religion often symbolizes that one is a pillar of the community. This can be illustrated by the common practice of switching churches with changes in one’s socioeconomic status (that is, Episcopalians are more closely associated with the establishment than Baptists). Additionally, elite affiliated religious denomination tend to have a relaxed This-Worldly attitude, all the better to maximize social networking and minimize alienation from society at large. The Unitarians are probably the most extreme manifestation of this, as they basically serve as a social networking club for secular folk who want to have a collegial churchy atmosphere (Unitarians kids have the highest SAT score of major religions).1

Via Arthur Hu.

Related: God & the scientists.

Update: Levels of support for Creationism among M.D.s. Here is the full report, please note that the sample size for some groups is very small.

1 – I have checked out Unitarian churches before and dated a lapsed Unitarian who was very active in her youth group, so I speak from experience.

Posted by razib at 02:40 AM

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