This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Why and how did Hayim Nahman Bialik become Israel’s national poet? Avner Holtzman, a professor of Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University, poses this very question in his new biography, “Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew”, published as part of the “Jewish Lives” series by Yale University…
A small, spinning toy is currently stumping Israeli linguists. The fidget spinner, a three-pronged device that has captured the hearts — and hands — of children worldwide, has yet to be given a Hebrew name, The Times of Israel reports. Scholars at The Academy of the Hebrew Language have turned their puzzlement into a social…
(JTA) — Six-time NBA All-Star Amar’e Stoudemire may soon be able to add another skill to his impressive resume: Hebrew. The 34-year-old basketball player, who moved to Israel after signing a two-year deal with the Israeli basketball team Hapoel Jerusalem in August, is now learning the aleph-bet, the Hebrew alphabet. Stoudemire —who isn’t Jewish but identifies with the Hebrew Israelites, African-Americans who believe they are…
Jehan Jaber, a Hebrew teacher from central Israel, has become an unlikely celebrity over there after the Arab teacher’s instructional song went viral on the Internet, drawing hundreds of thousands of views. “I did not put the video on the Web. I just filmed myself to see how I could improve my teaching methods. I…
The world’s earliest alphabet, inscribed on stone slabs found at a number of Egyptian sites, was an early form of Hebrew, according to a new analysis. According to the new study by the Wilfrid Laurier University archaeologist Douglas Petrovich, Israelites in Egypt took 22 ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and created an early Hebrew alphabet around 3,800…
Should “Lincoln” have two L’s in Hebrew? Some of the Jewish world’s top scholars convened at a Jerusalem conference to discuss Abraham Lincoln — and that was one of the topics of conversation at the event. During the conversation, held to mark the publication of a Hebrew translation of Jonathan Sarna’s “Lincoln and the Jews”…
(JTA) — The Trump campaign has launched a Hebrew-language Twitter feed, aiming to boost support for the GOP presidential nominee in Israel and raising an interesting question: Just how many potential U.S. voters in Israel don’t speak English? The feed, launched Monday night, is named “Campaign Trump b’Yisrael,” and uses the generic handle @USAISRAEL2016, though…
Oy. The Brooklyn Nets may have had the best of intentions, but this is an epic #HebrewFail. The Nets wanted to print a shirt that says “Represent Brooklyn”, which even when spelled correctly, sounds weird when translated to Hebrew: ״מייצג את ברוקלין״ (Brooklyn, Meyatzeg). Any female fan would need a different shirt, since the third…
די אַכצן לידער ווערן דאָ געזונגען פֿון די ערשטקלאַסישע אַרטיסטן — דער משפּחה בורשטיין
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