Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture How Yahweh Got Its Verbal Vibe Back
Among the blog posts that turn up in my email box are some written for Commentary magazine’s Contentions blog by Peter Wehner, who was a speechwriter for president George W. Bush. Wehner’s pieces, politically conservative and tempered by a Christian outlook, are always thoughtful, and I was struck by a sentence in a recent one…
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Culture Is This Any Way to Name a Train Station?
Forward reader Eldad Ganin has sent me an excerpt from an English-language publication in the Ukrainian city of Lviv (better known by its Polish, Yiddish and Russian name of Lvov), along with a query. The excerpt reads: Why Central Trains Stations in Ukraine Are Called ‘Vokzal’ It is believed that the word vokzal originated from…
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News President Confuses Jews and Janitors, Or Does He?
It took a friend to bring to my attention President Obama?s recent and underreported slip of the tongue, made during an address to the Congressional Black Caucus on September 24, in which he confused the words ?janitor? and ?Jew.? Though mentioned on the Forward?s Shmooze blog, the media made scant mention of the incident for…
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Culture Virtuous Woman Worth Weight in Coral?
An unusual request comes from South Africa. Neil Tuchten, a high court judge in that country, writes that he is about to hand down an opinion, written in Afrikaans, on property rights in a divorce case, and he wishes to begin it with the well-known verse in the book of Proverbs that reads in the…
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Culture Yom Kippur: The Fast of All Fasts
‘On Rosh Hashanah all shall be inscribed and on the day of the fast of Kippur all shall be sealed,” the High Holy Day prayer book says. “The day [yom] of the fast of Kippur,” yom tsom kippur, rather than “the fast of Yom Kippur,” tsom yom kippur, is an expression found in ancient rabbinic…
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Culture Happy Rosh Hashanah to All, No Matter What the Gender
‘I’m done with all my shanot tovot,” an Israeli friend said to me a while ago, meaning that she had finished sending out shana tova cards to all the people on her list. How did I know that she was talking about greeting cards and not tragically telling me, “I’m done with all my good…
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Culture A Honeymoon of Jewish Study
Timna Liberman writes from Chicago to ask: “Are you able to shed any light on the etymology of the word kallah in the Hebrew expression yarchei kallah, which refers to study months?” Yarḥei kallah, which on the face of it translates as “months of the bride” or “bridal months,” was the name of a custom…
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Culture Did Moses Have a Speech Impediment?
An interesting query comes from Gerald M. Siegel, professor emeritus in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Minnesota. He writes: In the Torah [Exodus 4:10], Moses initially resists being God’s messenger because of his speech, saying: “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words…. I am…
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