Levitt Speaks the Truth

For those not up on their Russian, “Pravda” means “truth,” long a source of many jokes.
BTW, it is related to the word for “right” as in going “to the right,” but then “right”
also has the double meaning of “correct” on English. “Left” has long had negative connotations,
as in “sinister,” which comes from the word for “left” in Latin and Italian (the political left
in Italy is the “centrosinistra”). And, in the Nicene Creed, Jesus sits on the right hand of
God the father, while in both Christianity and Islam the damned are thrown down by the left hand
of the deity. In Russian, “naleva,” being “on the left” literally, also means to be taking bribes
or corrupt more generally.

Besides the obvious fact that most people are right-handed, there is the widely entrenched social
practice in societies without tableware or toilet paper that one uses one’s right hand to eat with
and one’s left hand to, well, remove the sin of pollution with which Satan is associated. Hence,
in Islam, the chopping off of the right hand of a thief implies that they must become social outcasts
at mealtimes, atlhough the Shi’a weaken this by allowing the hand to be chopped at the base of the
fingers rather than at the wrist.