Catching my eye on the front page of the June 10 International Herald Tribune was the following paragraph in an article on the Sharon government’s dismantling of “unauthorized outposts” in the territories: “The Bible says God gave us this country as the homeland for Jews — it is all Israel,” said Amichai Hadad, 22, a seminary studentRead More
The latest Hebrew word to become a media hit is kibush. Writing, for example, in the June 2 New York Times about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s widely reported May 26 speech to the Knesset’s Likud faction, the Times’ Israel correspondent James Bennet wrote:Read More
Annabelle Weiss of Shaker Heights, Ohio, writes to ask: “Can you shed some light on the term ‘greenhorn’? Where did it originate? How did it come to be applied to new immigrants? Did it specifically refer to Jewish immigrants or had it also been applied to earlier waves of immigrants like the Irish?”Read More
Writing in a recent column in The New Republic on the supposed linkage between the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, remarks that “these issues have literally nothing to do with each other.” Although he is entitled to his judgment, the widespread use of the word “literally”…Read More
The Israeli government, so Defense Minister Shaul Mufaz was recently quoted by newspapers as saying, intends to hold the new Palestinian Authority leadership accountable for fighting terror al kotso shel yod, “to the tip of a yod.” This is a fine old Hebrew expression with an interesting history.If you look carefully at the printed letter yod…Read More
Where were we? Ah, yes: With the ninth-century Qarmatians in southern Iraq. In 899 they actually founded an independent state on the Persian Gulf under the leadership of Hamdan Qarmat’s disciple Sa’id al-Hasan al-Jannabi.Read More
Aaron Demsky writes from Ramat Gan, Israel: Apropos of your [April 11] piece entitled “Thugs and Bandits,” perhaps you might want to discuss the word “assassin,” too.Read More
A soft rain is falling outside my window. Possibly, it is the last, since this is the time of year when the rains in Israel stop and do not resume until the following autumn. This is why, in the Shemoneh Esreh or “Eighteen Benedictions” prayer recited three times daily, there is a difference of wording starting with the first day…Read More
Michael Brown sends an interesting query from Toronto. “Can someone,” he asks, “have an epiphany in Yiddish? I have asked around, and no one has been able to provide a Yiddish word or even an expression that incorporates ‘epiphany’ and its social, spiritual and intellectual connotations.”I should begin my answer to Brown’s question…Read More
‘The best kashe is kasha with gravy,” goes an old pun about the Passover Seder’s Four Questions, which are known in Yiddish as the fier kashes — a pun based on the word kashe in Yiddish meaning both buckwheat grits and a question.And yet a kashe is not an ordinary question. If you ask someone, “What time is it?” or “Are you…Read More
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