Philologos
By Philologos
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News What’s in a (Town’s) Name?
I was browsing the other day in the letters-to-the-editor section of an old issue of a magazine called First Things, an intellectual monthly edited by Richard John Neuhaus, a leading Catholic thinker and strong supporter of Israel. Taking Neuhaus to task for this support was a letter that commented on “the tragedy of a displaced…
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News You shall not murder
Professor Berel Lang writes from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.: “Perhaps you would give a couple of paragraphs to the misconception (and the mistranslation) of the Sixth Commandment [in Exodus 20:13], ‘You shall not murder,’ as ‘You shall not kill.’ The original Hebrew, lo tirtsah., is very clear, since the verb ratsah. means ‘murder,’ not…
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News Sephardic Arks
A New York Times article last month about the Jewish community of Istanbul contained a description of its oldest synagogue, the Ahrida, which was untouched by the recent bombings. The synagogue’s “main feature,” the Times observed, “is its teva, or pulpit, which is shaped like an ark. Some people say it was built to commemorate…
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News Bush Commits Parapraxis
I don’t know if anyone else caught it, but George W. Bush made what was obviously a Freudian slip in his initial appearance last week after the capture of Saddam Hussein. Gazing determinedly into the television cameras, he declared, “I have a message for the American people: You will not have to fear the rule…
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News Hanukah Gift to My Editors
Should the holiday we are celebrating this week be spelled “Hanukah,” “Chanukah,” “Hanukkah” or “Chanukkah?” You’ll find all four versions in the dictionaries, with “Hanukkah” being the preferred form nowadays. I myself prefer “Hanukah” with a single “k,” but I certainly think that either “Hanukah” or “Hanukkah” is a lot better than “Chanukah.” True, neither…
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News Language of Lachish
Sandra Metzger writes to ask: “Would you possibly know of an ancient battle that sounds like ‘Lekesh’ but is spelled differently? I read about it 20 years ago in a book on archaeology and the Bible, which was later stolen in Liverpool, England, when in transport back to America. A hole in my memory prevents…
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News Listen to Me a Chess Move?
From Zelde Krulewitz comes a letter asking about the Yiddish expression folg mir a gang. “I would dearly love to know,” she writes, “not only the literal translation of this phrase but its meaning and correct usage — i.e., under what circumstances one would say such a thing.” A literal translation of folg mir a…
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News Money Hole
‘Knesset member Meli Polishuk-Bloch accused officials of the ministry’s Bureau of the Budget of ‘viewing everything through the hole in the grush,’” Ha’aretz reported in a November 18 news item regarding the Israeli Finance Ministry’s decision to scale back a number of projected desalination plants for financial reasons. And on a different page of the…
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