Philologos
By Philologos
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News Shofar Sheep
‘Shofar… Judaism: A trumpet made of a ram’s horn, blown by the ancient Hebrews during religious ceremonies and as a signal in battle, now sounded in synagogue during Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur. Etymology: Hebrew shofar, ram’s horn; akin to Akkadian sapparu, sappar, fallow deer… from Sumerian segbar, fallow deer.” (The…
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News Kaput Ain’t Ours
‘Dear Philologos: Can this be? It’s not some etymological sleight of hand from an antisemitic cabal? Say it isn’t so, please!” These heartfelt words come from Ruth Seldin of White Plains, N.Y., who is devastated to learn that the word “kaput” does not have a Jewish origin. Browsing in the Merriam-Webster “Word a Day” Web…
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News Treason of the Intellectuals
Gideon Samet is an Israeli journalist and ex-editor-in-chief of the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz. On August 23, he published an op-ed in The New York Times that was captioned “Is Sharon losing his grip?” and that contained the following sentence — which, I suspect, proved puzzling to many readers: “Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin almost…
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News Virgin Legend?
A number of readers have written in about my August 13 column, “Questioning Virginity.” All have taken issue with my saying that the Greek word parthenos, in the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14, means “virgin.” Thus, for example, Peter Siegel comments: “You have fallen into the linguistic equivalent of the urban…
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News A Yearly Conundrum
Readers Ze’ev Orzech and Seth Cohen have written separately to inquire about the names of the months in the Hebrew calendar. Mr. Orzech especially wants to know about the calendar of the “Qumran sect” —which, he writes, “used a completely different set of names for their months.” Mr. Cohen inquires how it can be that,…
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News Questioning Virginity
‘Virgins or Grapes? The Koran Revisited” is the title of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s August 5 hopeful reflections on new scholarly readings of the Koran, which suggest that the famous “virgins” of the Muslim paradise, reputed to be one of the world-to-come’s rewards for faithful Muslims and (in some circles) suicide bombers, actually…
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News The Language of Crimes
The government of Mexico, you may have heard, has indicted former president Luis Echeverria Alvarez — who governed the country from 1970 to 1976 — along with two former aides and three army generals, for the crime of “genocide.” The six accused men are alleged to be responsible for killing 25 students who were beaten…
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News Bogie Speaks Yiddish!
One never knows where one will find a Jewish linguistic question answered. It can even be in an old Humphrey Bogart movie. The movie I was watching on TV the other night was “The Big Sleep,” starring Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Made in 1946, it was directed by Howard Hawks and its highly entertaining screenplay…
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Fast Forward Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to helm EPA, says he received bomb threat with ‘pro-Palestinian themed message’
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Opinion We can be thankful this year — and Jewish wisdom can help
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