Modern Israelis ascribe several meanings of the Hebrew root taph-bet-ayin: “to demand,” “to investigate,” “to prosecute” and while about it, “to sue”. None of these meanings were useful in deciphering a mysterious line in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For decades scholars struggled with a phrase sporting the Hebrew word “tit’ba’e’ch”. Their efforts to interpret the…
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…
One of Western Europe’s largest Hebrew bookstores has closed down in Amsterdam as its former owners prepare to immigrate to Israel. Samech, located in southern Amsterdam, has been supplying Hebrew-language books to members of Holland’s Jewish community for nearly 40 years and possessed a stock of 100,000 books, according to the website of the Dutch…
The American Jewish community and its media frequently express concern about the Jewish future in America, citing mounting rates of assimilation and increasingly liberal trends in religious practice. In this discussion, intermarriage is frequently conceived of as being both the standard measure and the primary symptom of just how assimilated Jews are. What is usually…
The British Department for Education (DfE) today announced a U-turn on its previously-proposed policy that would have limited the scope of Jewish elementary schools in the United Kingdom to teach Hebrew as a modern foreign language. As The Forward previously reported, under controversial plans released last December as part of an overall reform of the…
From Ben Zion Katz of Chicago comes this email: “The noted Italian rabbi Leon de Modena (1571-1648) accomplished a linguistic tour de force by writing an octet, entitled Kina Sh’mor, that made sense whether read as Hebrew or Italian. My brother Jeffrey and I have written a poem that does the same with Hebrew and…
A Romanian opera singer dressed like Dracula and wailing falsetto. Dancers in a Perspex boxes and drummers dosed in baby oil. Moustachioed Greeks dancing and singing about the joys of free alcohol. A Russian plea for world peace in three minutes with a key change. In case you missed it, that was the Eurovision Song…
Far from the children who beg for change from idling cars and the teenagers who hurl rocks at armed Israeli troops, a different spectacle of Palestinian youth is playing out in the ballroom of a luxury Ramallah hotel. Young contestants are gathered for a taping of “The President”, a game show that aims to select…
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