Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture You Can Teach Everything, Barring a ‘Disaster’
The new school year has begun in Israel, as in much of the world, and with it a renewed debate over the use in Israeli-Arab schoolchildren’s textbooks of the word nakba, or “disaster,” to designate the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the flight from its territory of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Approved…
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Culture Fallen From Grace to Gratuitous Hate
From Baltimore comes this query from Stanley Cohen: “In discussions in Israel of that country’s internal strife, one Hebrew phrase I’ve found constantly repeated is sin’at ḥinam, commonly translated as ‘baseless hatred.’ In this usage, what is the syntax and morphology of the word ḥinam? At first glance it looks like it might come from…
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Culture The Pros and Cons of Air Power
Bert Horwitz writes from Asheville, N.C. “Could you explain the origin of the Yiddish word luftmentsh? How is it possible that by joining two common German words, *Luft *(air) and *Mensch *(man, human being), one gets a Yiddish but not a German word?” It is, of course, perfectly possible for two Germanic words to be…
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Culture Before Madoff, or the Goyim, a Shande
‘Bad for the Jews? Madoff, Dwek, and Getting Over Worrying So Much About Avoiding a *Shandeh *for the Goyim” was the title of a column by former Forward arts and culture editor Alana Newhouse in the July 31 issue of New York Magazine. Jews, Newhouse wrote, should come to terms with the fact that their…
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Culture Redheaded Warrior Jews
Zack Miller writes from Bryant, Texas: “In the July 31 Forward, Allan Nadler reviewed two new books about Judah Halevi’s ‘The Kuzari.” Not surprisingly, this got me to thinking about the Khazars. Could you discuss the Yiddish term di royte yidn? I first came across it in Kevin Alan Brook’s speculation that these ‘red Jews’…
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Culture Telling Tales of Sick People
There probably are many medical conditions that you and I never hear of prior to learning about them from the media, but I doubt whether any has ever been behind a public riot before, let alone several days of rioting, such as broke out in mid-July in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me’ah She’arim. You may…
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Culture The New York Times: Ignorant and Antisemitic?
“Pharisees on the Potomac” is the headline from a July 18 attack by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on what she considers to be the moral hypocrisy — “the ancient political art of Tartuffery,” as she calls it — of Republican Party leaders on Capitol Hill. Let’s stay away from politics. Let’s even stay…
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Culture Stop Talking out of Your Nose
Shelly Jacobson writes: My husband grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family in Brooklyn. Recently, I used the word *fumfah, *thinking this meant someone who made a big or embarrassing error in speech. I didn’t think it was Yiddish — it was just a made-up word to me. But my husband says it definitely is Yiddish…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Explainer: What the Israeli occupation of Gaza would mean for Israelis and Palestinians
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Yiddish אויסשטעלונג אין אונגערן — רמזים פֿון הילצערנער שיל פֿון 18טן יאָרהונדערטExhibit in Hungary displays remnants of 18th century wooden synagogue
אינעם 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די קהילה אין נאַזנאַ געווען די צווייט גרעסטע אין גאַנץ טראַנסילוואַניע.
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News Is the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism the new Red Scare?
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Opinion Trump’s cuts are a war on Jewish literature, thought and history itself
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