The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
April 29, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 17

Everything But...
           I know a girl named Tabitha. Actually, I don’t really know her well, but I did meet her and have heard even more about her in recent years. She is the daughter of a scholar in the Syriac church who gave her that name because it is an Aramaic/Syriac name. Tabitha has become somewhat famous because her father speaks to her only in Syriac. Recently, he presented a paper at an academic conference on how Tabitha is developing in her native language. She has picked up Turkish from her mother and English from everybody else she knows. Talk about multi-culturalism - this is happening in New Jersey!
           Dorcas is the product of a multi-cultural society, for it is the Greek name for Tabitha which means “gazelle,” a light and graceful animal. Palestine was not as we once assumed a backwater Jewish region that only spoke Aramaic on the streets and Hebrew in the synagogue. Joppa (Jaffa today), where Tabitha/Dorcas lived, is on the Mediterranean coast and a busy port where Greek, the language of trade, was surely spoken in every section of town. Probably more than a few other exotic languages were heard regularly as well.
           Dorcas societies have abounded in many a church women’s groups, but somehow Tabitha Circles have never caught on that much. (Wasn’t that the name of the heroine of “Bewitched”?) A lot of knitting goes on in such groups, which follows in their namesake’s example. Clothing, food, a cool drink, a bed for the night, a kind word of welcome are simple things, but demonstrate a simple love that those in need remember. Names do not matter as much. Some people just make a habit of it.