HERE'S TO US ALL LEFTIES

Here's to Link,

to Arya Stark,

to Ehud ben Gera, 

to Leo da Vinci,

to the Prince of Tennis,

to Joan of Arc,

to my grandmothers,

to my parents,

to yours truly,

the list is endless,

so that every day, not only the 13th of August,

would be World Left-Handed Day!

#LeftiesRule

Today is the 13th of August, International Day of Left-Handedness.

#LeftiesRule

Her fencing master Syrio Forel encouraged Arya to fight left-handed.

At last, my 16-year-old self had found a sinistral role model.

And, as a sinistral myself, I couldn't but post a little about the subject of this day in August being commemorated.
Both my grandmothers were subjected to a series of punishments to set them right: left arms tied to their backs, raps at the left wrist with a ruler, thousands of such things. Upon growing up, they decided not to set their respective sinistral children right, but rather encourage their left-handedness. And my own sinistral tendencies, of both hand and foot, were warmly encouraged as well.
In Christmas pantomimes, according to tradition, the villains always enter and exit stage left, while the heroes enter and exit stage right.
If one surveys the words for 'left' and 'right' in European languages, one finds that the latter are groups of cognates—dexios, dexter, destra and diritto, dereche, direita, droit, rechte, right, deis—and the former mostly unrelated—laios, sinister, lasciato, izquierdo, linke, gauche, left, clé. This is because words for 'left', with their negative connotations, have undergone taboo-substitution from foreign sources; izquierdo, for instance, is Basque ("ezkerreko"). So are esquerre and esquerdo (all Iberian Romance languages have adopted the Basque euphemism. In fact, Italian is the only Romance language to retain the original sinistro instead of replacing it with a euphemism!). To call someone gauche or sinister is to insult him—whereas to call him adroit or dextrous is high praise. It is no coincidence that right should have its two primary meanings, nor that left should come from a root meaning 'lame' or 'weak.'
Judas Iscariot, Cain, and Iago are depicted as left-handed; but on the flip side so are Link, Arya Stark, Emery Thane (of whom I have spoken before), Rei Hino, Rapunzel and her Eugene, Elsa of Frozen fame, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, the list goes on and on.
In real life, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, Andersen, da Vinci, Escher, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, and Jingoro Hidari (best known for the Sleeping Cat, below, and the original Three Wise Monkeys), among many others, were renowned sinistrals.

And looking at McCartney or Hendrix playing the guitar shows that they strum with their left and hold with their right. As I do myself with Trond Larsen's guitar app.
The Fair Folk were and are seen (as depicted in Andersen's Elfin Hill/Elverhöj) as being left-handed and left-footed, just like Yours Truly. Like freckles or reddish hair (two other traits that I possess), this may have been (aside from an outright sign of villainy in a fictional character) one of the signs that this was no ordinary human child, but a changeling that parent trolls, elves, or fairies had swapped in the cradle.
Still a faint aura of dextralism lingers over our society.
How many times is it presumed that righties, like men/males or straight people, are the default; which makes those who don't fit in deviants? In a Grimm story, for instance, a violinist gives a bear lessons:
Aber du glaubst auch nicht, daß er sie aufgebracht hat. Wie das vorbei war, holte das Schneiderlein eine Violine unter dem Rock hervor und spielte sich ein Stückchen darauf. Als der Bär die Musik vernahm, konnte er es nicht lassen und fing an zu tanzen, und als er ein Weilchen getanzt hatte, gefiel ihm das Ding so wohl, daß er zum Schneiderlein sprach: "Hör, ist das Geigen schwer?" - "Kinderleicht, siehst du, mit der Linken leg ich die Finger auf, und mit der Rechten streich ich mit dem Bogen drauf los, da geht's lustig, hopsasa, vivallalera!" - "So geigen," sprach der Bär, "das möcht ich auch verstehen, damit ich tanzen könnte, so oft ich Lust hätte. 
 When that was over, the tailor took out a violin from beneath his coat, and played a piece of it to himself. When the bear heard the music, he could not help beginning to dance, and when he had danced a while, the thing pleased him so well that he said to the little tailor, "Hark you, is the fiddle heavy?" "Light enough for a child. Look, with the left hand I lay my fingers on it, and with the right I stroke it with the bow, and then it goes merrily, hop sa sa vivallalera!" "So," said the bear; "fiddling is a thing I should like to understand too, that I might dance whenever I had a fancy. 
Presently the tailor took out a little fiddle and began playing on it. When the bear heard the music he could not help dancing, and after he had danced some time he was so pleased that he said to the tailor, 'I say, is fiddling difficult?' 'Mere child's play,' replied the tailor; 'look here! you press the strings with the fingers of the left hand, and with the right, you draw the bow across them, so--then it goes as easily as possible, up and down, tra la la la la--'
The same can be said about Comenius's "Sinistra tenet, dextra peragit," and the same author's "Ambidexter melior est quam scaevola." Unlike the non-dextralist Fenno-Ugric and Germanic words for equal handedness (se. tvâhänt, de. Zweihänder, hu. kétkezes, fi. kaksikätinen: all of which literally mean "two-handed"), the term ambidexterity refers to having two right hands. Ewww.
However, deviance can be positive or negative.
Whether wielding a sword or a tennis racket, for instance, we left-handers are sure to throw our opponents off-kilter. Nowadays during peacetime, in sports, it's a pretty valued trait... but, in the olden days, we sinistrals had pretty much of a more relevant advantage... a literal matter of life and death. Syrio Forel, for instance, encouraged Arya's left-handedness for this very reason.
The Old Testament stories of Ehud killing Eglon and Joab/Yoav killing Amasa have been seen in both a positive and negative light through the ages. Both stories involve greeting the opponent as a friend, reaching out a friendly right arm, while thrusting a hidden left-handed sword into the false ribs of that person in cold blood. Not in vain have these stories raised many an eyebrow in both fear and awe:
The second parallel (of Yoav) with Ehud is found in the account of the assassination of Amasa. Here, the focus seems to be on the unexpected thrust of the weapon using the left hand.
And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer parlour, which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out. Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlour upon him, and locked them.
--
When they were at the great stone which is in Gibeon, Amasa went before them. And Joab's garment that he had put on was girded unto him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the sheath thereof; and as he went forth it fell out.

And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him.  But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's left hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and struck him not again; and he died.

---

As for the unexpected left-handed thrust, in Judg. iii 21-22, Ehud’s

reaching with his left hand to draw the sword from his right to plunge

it into the king’s belly is clearly and vividly described. That Joab also

used an unexpected left-handed thrust to dispose of his victim is, however,

often overlooked. Here, although the text never explicitly states

that Joab used his left hand to kill Amasa, it is nonetheless a logical

conclusion given the way the assassination is described. For in 2 Sam.

xx 8, it is first reported that Joab’s sword accidentally fell out from

its sheath. Then, presumably to divert Amasa’s attention from the

fallen sword, Joab is said in 2 Sam. xx 9 to grasp Amasa by the beard

with his right hand to give him a kiss. The author then shows

Joab surprising Amasa with his sword plunged into his belly in 2 Sam.

xx 10, presumably even while the deceitful kiss was still in progress.

Here, since the narrator had taken extra care to specify that Joab

grasped Amasa’s beard with his right hand, the only hand left to pick

up the fallen sword and plunge it into Amasa’s belly without Amasa

noticing is the left. Thus, the unspecified "other hand" holding the sword in

2 Sam. xx 10 can only be the left. What this means, then, is

that like Eglon, Amasa had also died from an unexpected left-handed

thrust of the sword through his belly by someone not presenting himself

as a foe.

Incidentally, it is also worth noting that after Amasa has been killed,

the narrator reports in 2 Sam. xx 10 that his intestines poured out

onto the ground. This gory detail is reminiscent of the report in Judg.

iii 22 that Eglon’s excrement came out as a result of the stab to his

belly.

Secondly, a similar argument can also be made concerning the

implied left-handed thrust in the account of Joab’s assassination of

Amasa. Now in the Ehud account, Ehud’s left-handedness is significant

not only because it played on his tribal identity as a Benjamite or “son

of the righter-hander”, but also because it was this unexpected left-handedness

that allowed him to smuggle the weapon in by hiding it

on the side of his body where one would normally not expect a weapon

to be carried. But in the account of Joab’s assassination of Amasa,

although the author seems to have made it a point to note that Joab

grasped Amasa’s beard with his right hand, thus resulting in the deadly

thrust being delivered by the only other free hand, which is his left,

in the grand scheme of things, it actually would not have mattered

even had Joab grasped Amasa’s beard with his left hand such that the

weapon was deployed by his right (Admittedly, if Israelite society was one in which the proper use of the left versus the right hand was relatively well defined, then it would be unlikely that Joab would grasp Amasa’s beard with his left hand. But the point being made in the following

discussion would still stand. For if it is indeed natural and expected for Joab to grasp

Amasa’s beard with his right hand, then why bother specifying that the act was done

with the “right” hand? As it is, this unnecessary specification seems rather to draw

attention to the different activity each hand was occupied with). For from the description of the

assassination in 2 Sam. xx 9-10, one gets the impression that what

put Amasa off his guard was actually Joab’s unexpected display of

affection as he grasped his beard to kiss him (This is especially so given that Joab and Amasa had been fighting on opposing sides until not long ago.). Therefore, regardless

of which hand Joab might have used, Amasa would have been equally

surprised and distracted, thus giving Joab the opportunity to carry out

his assassination. What this means is that strictly speaking, the author

did not need to specify in 2 Sam. xx 9 that it was with the right hand

that Joab grasped Amasa’s beard. He could have simply left out the

word “right” and the overall plot would not have been affected in the

least. This suggests, therefore, that the subtle attempt to frame this

assassination as a left-handed one is not motivated by internal plot

necessity, but more likely, by a desire to provide a specific parallel

with Ehud.

Finally, there is the matter of the pouring out of Amasa’s intestines.

As has been noted, the description of Amasa’s intestines pouring out

after Joab’s sword was plunged into his belly is reminiscent of the

detail about Eglon’s excrement coming out after Ehud’s sword was

plunged into his belly. But here again, while the detail of Eglon’s

excrement coming out seems relevant to the advancement of the plot,

the description of Amasa’s intestines pouring out strikes one as unnecessary.

For in the case of Eglon, the foul smell that resulted from the

coming out of his excrement may have been what caused the attendants

outside to conclude that Eglon was relieving himself. This thus

explains their hesitancy to barge in, which in turn gave Ehud sufficient

time to escape. But the same plot relevance appears to be absent

regarding the detail about Amasa’s intestines. True, the sight of Amasa’s

corpse wallowing in blood in the middle of the road did become somewhat

of a distraction for the soldiers in 2 Sam. xx 12-13. But even

there, no further mention was made of the intestines. The focus was

instead only on the large quantity of blood, something to be expected

from a stab wound. Thus once again, one can argue that the detail

about Amasa’s intestines pouring out may have been included only to

provide a parallel with the Ehud account and not out of internal plot

necessity.

But if the above three observations indeed suggest that, from a

rhetorical standpoint, the assassination account of Ehud has priority

over the two concerning Joab, such that it is the latter two that make

allusions to the former, then what the author of the Joab accounts

seems to be doing was presenting Joab as a latter-day Ehud. 

At least as Bar-Efrat understands it, David’s condemnation of Joab in

1 Kgs. ii 5 refers essentially to the fact that “Joab did not kill Amasa in the course of battle but during times of peace, in the guise of friendship, when the victim suspected nothing.” Thus, to Bar-Efrat, what David objected to was “the treacherous way in which the murders

were implemented”.

But regardless of whether it is the assassinations themselves or

the treacherous way they were carried out that is the focus of the

condemnation against Joab, the simple fact is that Joab’s assassinations

are not presented as honourable acts. And in light of this overall negativity,

one can hardly give any part of the accounts a heroic reading.

And that brings us back to Ehud. If Joab’s two assassinations are

indeed meant to be understood negatively, then by virtue of the fact

that each makes allusions to Ehud, one can infer that there must have

been aspects of Ehud’s assassination that were also viewed negatively

by the author of the Joab accounts. And since the allusions seem to

concentrate especially on the use of deception, one can only conclude

that this use of deception must have been what was viewed negatively

by the author of the Joab accounts.

Furthermore, not withstanding the current debate about how Ehud

should be evaluated, this negative take of Ehud’s use of deception must

have been sufficiently well established among contemporaries of the

author of the Joab accounts for him to simply make the allusions without

having to worry about his audience missing the point. What this

seems to suggest, then, is that, a negative take on Ehud’s use of deception

may have early intra-biblical support, and is therefore not as “disturbing”

and counter intuitive as Andersson thinks. While this does

not necessarily justify a uniformly negative evaluation of Ehud such as

Klein’s, it does leave open the possibility that, in spite of a deliverance

that deserves be celebrated, there is room for disquietude when

it comes to Ehud’s use of deception.

So what could be made out of Ehud and Yoav? Clever trickster liberators or underhanded, sinister traitors? Benjamites, sons of the Right, yet dextrally challenged (the L-word, though mentioned elsewhere in the Tanakh, is implicit in both stories).
I know what my own humble opinion on these tales, as a proud, young, subversive sinistral, is.


PS. SINISTER STORMTROOPERS

Imperial Stormtroopers are all left-handed, speaking of which.

They were at first all cloned from the same cookie-cutter, Jango Fett; a sinistral cookie-cutter, and thus, all assault rifles produced by the Palpatinian Empire were made for left-handed marksmen, with the firing chamber on the left side.
As the ranks of the Empire broadened to include more and more non-clone troopers, including dextrals (and non-human humanoids), no right-handed guns were produced, leading to "set left," against their will, the non-sinistral members of the military.
For once, the left --at least in a fictional sci-fi universe-- is the default and the right is the deviance.

THE LEFT-HANDED BENJAMITES

THE LEFT-HANDED BENJAMITES

After the incomplete conquest of Canaan, God tells the people that because of their failure to drive out all of the Canaanites they haven't lived up to their part of the covenant. Now these nations will never be entirely destroyed but will serve to test Israel (Jud. 2:22)
The rest of Chapter 3, except for one verse, is devoted to the story of Ehud, the first real tale of Judges. Though this tale is brief, it has a distinct character and is filled with crude humor. Notable in the story is the fact that Ehud the Benjamite is a left-handed man. The story of the war resulting from the outrage at Gibeah is likewise notable for the prowess of 700 picked left-handed Benjamite slingers. This war and its aftermath are the final stories of Judges. So Judges opens and closes with tales of the left-handed Benjamites, and one is tempted to think that some sort of genetic drift had blessed this tribe with a larger than normal number of south-paws. The stories also indicate a certain superiority of left-handed warriors. There was in fact such a superiority, but it was entirely situational, and the left handedness of me Benjamite warriors was not natural. What Jud. 3:15 actually says in Hebrew is mat Ehud was a man 'itter yad yamiyn or, in English, dextrally challenged (literally "restricted in the right hand.") The same phrase is used to describe the 700 picked slingers. This could mean that Ehud had a withered or lame right hand or arm and was thus forced to use his left hand or it could refer to a bias against left-handedness in that anyone using his left hand would automatically be assumed to have a defective right hand. But if either of these was the case, Ehud's ruse of hiding his shortsword under his clothes on the right side would not have worked. Also, it's unlikely that the 700 slingers all had withered right hands. In the story of Ehud, the Moabites, in alliance with the Ammonites and Amalekites, have invaded Israel, and are extracting tribute from the Israelites. Ehud goes with those who are presenting tribute to the Moabite king, Eglon. But Ehud is going with the intention of assassinating Eglon. He makes himself a double-edged sword a cubit (roughly 18 inches) long and hides it under his clothes on his right side, the idea of this being that since most people are right handed and since it's easier to reach across one's body to grasp something, anyone searching for concealed weapons will concentrate on the left side. But if Ehud had a lame or withered right arm he would be searched on the right side. For his ruse to work Ehud had to have not only had a functional right arm, but had to appear to be right-handed as well— which he probably was.
The only possible meaning then for the term "restricted in the right hand/dextrally challenged" was that he had been deliberately restricted. In other words both Ehud and the 700 left-handed slingers were trained to fight left-handed by having their right arms bound during training. This was also practiced by the Maori of New Zealand, the Spartans and the Scottish clan Kerr. To understand what advantage a left-handed warrior would have in battle we have to remember that right-handed warriors carried their shields in their left hands. When two right-handed warriors met, their shields blocked each other's swords. But when a right-handed warrior met a left-handed warrior their shields faced each other, and each warrior had his open, unshielded side facing the open side—and the sword— of the other. The left-hander was used to this, but the right-hander was not and was therefore vulnerable. Left-handed slingers were also a threat. A right-handed throw tends to curve counter-clockwise, i.e. to the left, and would tend to hit the shielded side of opposing warriors. A left-handed throw, curving clockwise (to the right) would tend to strike the enemy on his unshielded side and would be more likely to injure or kill him. So the Benjamites, comprising the smallest tribe in Israel, trained up a special elite cadre of left-handed warriors as a way to maintain their independence, and Ehud was one of these.
Besides the issue of Ehud's left-handedness there is the issue of whether or not the tale is historical. There are certain aspects of the story that indicate that even if it was based on truth it has been heavily fictionalized; that is, it abounds in elements of the craft of story-telling. First of all we might well look in vain for a king named Eglon even if we had any effective Moabite king lists. His name is derived from either egla meaning "bull-calf" or agol meaning "round." Thus, Eglon, of whom Jud. 3:17b says, "Now Eglon was a very fat man" was either the fatted calf ready for the slaughter or was fat even in name. Perhaps the name Eglon as "bull-calf" or rather, "young bull" was ironically understood to imply agol as a pun. When Ehud, promising to divulge secret information, gains a private audience with Eglon, the latter's fat is used to intensify the crude, graphic detail of the assassination (Jud. 3:20-22 ):
And Ehud came to him, as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, "I have a message from God for you." And he arose from his seat. And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly; and the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the sword out of his belly; and the dirt came out.
Not only is Eglon's fat closing over the blade and virtually swallowing the sword a particularly graphic detail, but the fact that "the dirt came out"—the Hebrew word translated as "dirt" is parshedon, referring to the anus—i.e. that Eglon's bowels relaxed as he died, causing him to involuntarily defecate, may seem to push the crudity of the situation to excessive levels. However, this story is not alone in using this particular detail. The Iliad is replete with death scenes in which we are told, "His bowels gushed out, and darkness covered his eyes." In this story the involuntary defecation not only adds to the crude humor of Eglon's death but gives the hero time to make his escape before the king's body is discovered (Jud. 3:24):
When he had gone, the servants came; and when they saw that the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, "He is only relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber."
The term used in the MT and the KJV is that Eglon is "covering his feet" or more accurately, enclosing his lower extremities—"feet" being the displaced metaphor for the genitals and pelvic region, i.e. being decently private as he defecates. While we are not told why the servants thought the king was relieving himself, the probable reason was that they smelled the stench of Eglon's involuntary defecation. As the servants wait for the king to finish, Ehud makes his escape and is on his way to rally the armies of Israel to attack the Moabites. Just how he has made his getaway is not clear from the text. We are told that he is the one who has locked the chamber doors, and it's clear that they've been locked from the inside. So what was Ehud's avenue of escape? Since the king was obviously in the habit of relieving himself in his roof chamber, it is possible that it had a toilet with a shaft leading down to a receptacle on the ground floor. Thus, as Baruch Halpern points out, it is entirely likely that Ehud escaped undetected by slipping down the shaft of the king's oubliette.
After gaining home territory Ehud sounds his trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, telling the men he has rallied to seize the fords of the Jordan. The Israelites not only attack the leaderless Moabite occupation force, but once it is defeated they cut down those fleeing as they try to ford the Jordan river. As we will see later, seizing the fords is an important part of the stories of Gideon and Jephthah as well.