Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture ‘Jew-Washing’ Is Bad Practice and Phrase
In the July 24 issue of the New York Jewish Week, you’ll find an article by Yitzhak Santis and Gerald M. Steinberg that begins: “At the Pittsburgh General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this month, a motion to adopt a boycott of three companies for doing business with Israel was hotly debated and…
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Culture Maccabees Most Macabre
Moshe Waldmann has sent me an email about my July 20 column dealing with how Yiddish sometimes uses different words when referring to Jews as opposed to gentiles. One example given there was the verb mekaber zayn, to “bury” (from Hebrew kavar), which is reserved by Yiddish for Jews, and Mr. Waldmann wonders whether this…
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News Bon Voyage for Jews
Victoria Cantor writes: ?Whenever someone embarks on a journey, my cousins all sing a Yiddish song that goes, ?Lumen zikh ke zegena yush ke forte a veck! Hey! Hey! Hey!? Have you any thoughts or ideas as to its origins?? The song Ms. Cantor is thinking of is ?Yoshke Fort Avek,? and the line she…
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Culture Interfaith Insults
From Jacob Mendlovic of Toronto comes a letter of complaint about “the intense hostility of Haredim,” or ultra-Orthodox Jews, toward gentiles as manifested in such “Jewish n-words” as sheygets (a non-Jewish boy; from Hebrew shaketz, “abomination”); shikse (a non-Jewish girl); orel (an uncircumcised man) and akum (heathen — a talmudic acronym for ovdey kokhavim u’mazalot,…
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Culture How To Train a Hebrew-Speaking Dog
Cheryl Krushat writes: “We are about to adopt a female puppy, to whom my son would like to teach Hebrew commands. My son was given the impression that Israeli search and rescue dog handlers he met while he was in the U.S. Army gave commands in one gender form, regardless of the dog’s sex —…
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Culture Rise of the Machines
Gideon Weisz of Boulder, Colo., calls my attention to a recent BBC translation gaffe that has British Jews chuckling. In their comedy “Episodes,” the British television channel’s producers staged a scene in a Jewish cemetery in which there is a tombstone bearing the English inscription: Beloved Husband and Father Yehudi Penzel Dearly Missed Beloved Head…
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Culture The God Who ‘Evenings Evenings’
Harvey Klineman has a question about the Hebrew phrase ha-ma’ariv aravim that occurs at the beginning and end of the opening prayer of the evening service — a phrase that means (referring to God) “who brings on evenings,” although a more literal translation of it would be “who evenings evenings.” Mr. Klineman writes: “Since this…
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Culture A Guide for the Judgmental
A reader wishing to be identified only as “Harry” has a question about the Mishnaic tractate of Pirkei Avot or — as it is often called in English — “The Ethics of the Fathers.” (The Hebrew title literally means “Chapters of the Fathers,” the book being divided into six chapters in which many of the…
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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