Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Why Sukkot is called the ‘holiday of the harvest’ — even though there isn’t any harvest
In the Bible, the prayer book and Jewish tradition, the holiday of Sukkot — the “Feast of Booths” or “Feast of Tabernacles,” as it is generally referred to in rather archaic English — also has an accompanying epithet: ḥag ha-asif, the Feast or Holiday of “Gathering” or (as the King James and many other English…
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Culture May You Be Inscribed in the Book of Life for 5774
Kotvenu b’sefer he-ḥayyim, “Inscribe us in the Book of Life,” Jews pray in the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. “May you be written down and inscribed for a good year,” they say to each other. No concept or phrase is more associated with the High Holy Days than that of a divine “book”…
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Culture Can You Name Your Kid ‘Messiah’?
You may have read about Lu Ann Ballew, the Tennessee judge who recently changed a 7-month-old baby’s name, Messiah, to Martin. Her ruling was based not on compassion for the poor infant, but on the opinion that “the word Messiah is a title and it is a title that has only been earned by one…
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Culture How To Recognize a Secret Spanish Jew by His Marrano Accent
Dr. William Greenfield of Libertyville, Ill., asks: “Are you familiar with George Borrow’s identifying a living marrano in 19th-century Spain by his speech pattern? It’s in his book ‘The Bible in Spain.’” Never having heard of George Borrow, I went to the Internet and found a digital copy of “The Bible in Spain.” A fascinating…
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Culture Cracking the Ugaritic Code
Forward reader Raffi Bilek has some questions about Ugaritic, the ancient Semitic language, closely related to biblical Hebrew, that was unearthed in archaeological excavations begun in the late 1920s at the ancient site of Ugarit, along the Syrian coast north of Latakia. Mr. Bilek asks: “How do we know that Ugaritic is so similar to…
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Culture Is ‘Yeshivish’ a Language or a Dialect Like ‘Ebonics’ — or Neither?
In last week’s column, I discussed Sarah Bunin Benor’s recent book, “Becoming Frum,” which dwells largely on the process whereby American Jews who have become religiously Orthodox adjust to the linguistic usages of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities they have joined. In many respects, as Benor points out, they have to learn to speak a…
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Culture Frum Guide To Talking Like an FFB, BT or an FFT
‘As the discussion above has shown,” writes the author of a recent book about linguistic issues, “BTs address this liminality in various ways. Some become FFT — at times even passing as FFB — and others highlight their BT identity.” Some of you may immediately know who is being talked about. For those who don’t…
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Culture A Constellation of Theories Regarding the Nebulous History of Orion
Forward reader Ady Manory writes: “I’ve been wondering about the origin of the Hebrew name of the constellation Orion, k’sil. Is it Babylonian? Is it related to the Hebrew month of Kislev? I’d love to find out if the name was a Jewish way of disparaging the accepted mythology of the times.” Mr. Manory is…
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