Too loaded (San 113a)

Yesterday we finished Sanhedrin. Today we begin Makkot. However, I want to explore an important issue that came up in yesterday's daf.

In a somewhat lengthy discussion of Jericho we learn that it is both forbidden to rebuild a city in Jericho or to build a city anywhere else with the name Jericho.

I've been thinking a lot about that teaching. Today there are names (and terms) that are out of bounds. I'm not sure if I know anyone in America who would name their child Adolph Hitler (although there are some exceptions). The same goes with Amalek. Words too express this idea. In college a friend and I thought it would be funny to take back the word kike, just as the GLBT community has taken back the word queer. It was to no avail. It was too charged, too offensive.

However, the GLBT community has succeed in taking back the world queer just as the black community has taken back the n-word. So what makes these movements different?  Didn't they reclaim a loaded and historically problematic word? Is it so wrong to build city called Jericho. Isn't there one on Long Island! Can't this city (my mother's birthplace)  remind us of of Joshua's quest and its dominant themes (God's power, human faith)?

Leaving aside New York's decision to go ahead and reclaim the name, I understand the Rabbi's point of view. Unless a movement of people get behind a word they cannot reclaim it. For the Rabbis, Jericho was too loaded a term (theologically that is) in order to be reclaimed. Maybe we too will reclaim kike for ourselves, but until then, let's leave that one for the history books, right alongside the biblical notion of Jericho.