Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Rhyming Slang For Four By Twos
Forward reader Susan Hessel writes: “I am reading a book called ‘The Report,’ a novel based on an incident in a London bomb shelter in 1943. In the book, Jews, particularly Jewish refugees, are referred to as ‘four-by-twos.’ Although this is apparently Cockney rhyming slang, I have never heard the expression before and wonder what…
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Culture Je t’aime, Ahbal
When, early in November, Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut, Israel’s national trade union, publicly called defense minister Ehud Barak an ahbal for illegally employing a Filipino housekeeper without proper work papers, he was using a word you won’t find in standard Hebrew dictionaries. You’ll find it in Arabic ones, though — and in Israeli…
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Opinion Talmud of Traffic
‘Sa l’shalom,” said the policeman who had been about to give me a ticket for a traffic violation. (In the end he didn’t, because he discovered that he and my eldest daughter had been in the same class in elementary school, but that’s another story.) Translated freely, this meant, “You can go.” It’s at such…
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Culture Rowing Home to Haven In Sunny Palestine
Jacob Wolf writes from Bet Shemesh, Israel: “In your October 17 column about the phrase ‘making aliyah,’ you speak of the ‘mountains of Palestine’ and ‘the Palestinian coast.’ Since ‘Palestine’ was the name given the Land of Israel by the Romans after their destruction of the Temple, and remains a term used by those who…
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Culture Going Up, One More Time, Gentlemen Please
Three distinguished readers have sent me four e-mails concerning my October 15 column on the expression “making aliyah.” All make good points. Let’s start with Noyekh Miller, the redoubtable editor of the Yiddish language website Mendele. He e-mailed me twice. The first time was to say: “You’re right in pointing to the increasing proportion of…
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Culture What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Eldad Ganin would like an explanation. He writes: “In Hebrew we have a clear pattern. If the name of a country ends, as many such names do in Hebrew, with –ya, the names of the country’s people and language follow automatically. Thus, rusya, ‘Russia,’ rusi, ‘Russian [person],’ rusit, ‘Russian [language]’; angliya, ‘England,’ angli, ‘Englishman,’ anglit,…
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Culture Oath of Loyalty to What?
If Israel had Words of the Month, October’s would be “Jewish,” as in “a Jewish and democratic state,” or medina yehudit ve’demokratit, in Hebrew. This is what — if a controversial cabinet decision is adopted as law by the Knesset — anyone becoming an Israeli citizen will have to swear loyalty to. The many criticisms…
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Culture Move On Up (Toward Your Destination)
“When someone moved to Israel, we used to say he was ‘going on aliyah.’ Over the past 10 to 15 years, the phrase has changed to ‘He made aliyah.’ This doesn’t seem to make sense in either English or Hebrew. How did the change come about?” Over the past 20 to 25 years may be…
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