Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Shelter From the Storm
During the holiday of Sukkot, one adds a small prayer when saying the birkat ha-mazon, the Grace After Meals. It goes, Ha-rah. aman yakim lanu et sukkat David ha-nofelet, “May the Merciful One [that is, God] raise up the fallen sukkah of David.” I’ve often wondered what exactly this referred to, and this year I…
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Culture Strange Case of a Death in Venice
Isaac Pollak of New York City has sent me a photograph from his private Judaica collection of a late 18th-century engraving by an Italian artist named Giovanni del Pian. Part of it, showing several men emerging from a house to lower a wooden coffin with Hebrew lettering into a gondola, appears alongside this column. At…
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Culture A Very Merry 5773 to All
Everyone knows when it’s New Year’s Day — and everyone knows what new year it’s the first day of. After 2012 comes 2013. But although nearly all American Jews know it’s Rosh Hashanah this week, not all of them could tell you that the new Jewish year is 5773. After all, once the holiday is…
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Culture The Yiddish Quran
There was an unusual event in Haifa the other day. Muhammad Sharif Odeh, the leader of the Israeli community of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, announced the 25th anniversary of an Ahmadiyya-sponsored translation into Yiddish of selections from the Quran. Called by Haifa’s Jewish mayor, Yona Yahav, the “Reform Jews of Islam,” the Ahmadiyyas, who…
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Culture David Brooks Channels ‘Perplexed’ Maimonides
A column on the Obama-Romney race by political and social commentator David Brooks in the August 20 New York Times bore the caption “Guide for the Perplexed.” Brooks was trying to give some helpful counsel to undecided voters trying to make up their minds, and either he or the editors of the column thought this…
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Culture Neither a Niftar Nor a Nishperer Be
Time to catch up on some mail! Gary J. Frenkel takes issue with my statement in my August 17 column that the name Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshu (a shortened form of Yeshu’a, itself a shortened form of Yehoshua or Joshua). Mr. Frenkel writes: “My understanding is that Yeshu is, not a shortened version of…
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Culture Many Mysteries of the Word ‘Mystery’
Forward reader Marvin Karp, inspired by my July 29 column about the word “macabre” and its possible connection with the Hebrew verb kavar, to bury (a connection that, as I observed, etymologists dismiss in favor of “Maccabee”), writes: “I have always sensed a connection between kavar and Italian cavare, to draw out, and scavare, to…
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Culture Yoshke of Nazareth
Henry Sapoznik, director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture at the University of Wisconsin, has taken me to task for writing in my July 27 column that the song “Yoshke Fort Avek” was written by the Yiddish performer Aaron Lebedeff during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Lebedeff, Mr. Sapoznik writes, had nothing to do with…
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