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short takes

According to the ad, next week's episode of "Mister Sterling" is the season finale. Who ever heard of a nine-episode season? I thought shows that started mid-year ran 11-13 episodes, not 9. I wonder what the prospects for renewal are. It's got some rough edges, certainly, but I enjoy the show.

And speaking of short seasons, I do wish they would get around to releasing "Wizards and Warriors" on DVD before my Nth-generation videotapes rot. It was only 8 episodes, and it was some of the funniest fluff fantasy I've seen. It aired long before most of us had VCRs (back when tapes were $8-10 apiece), and I still remember chipping in with some fellow college students to pay for tapes and shipping to get copies from a friend. (Hi Lee, if you're reading this.)

Mystery food of the week: I've encountered "buffalo mozzerella" several times in the last few years, and not at all before that. I was wondering today about the definition -- is it made from buffalo milk? Did it gain popularity in Buffalo NY? Does it have nothing whatsoever to do with bison? A google search suggests that it's made with buffalo milk; I didn't know anybody milked buffalo. This, in turn, led me to wonder if buffalo is kosher, as milk from a non-kosher animal is also non-kosher. (Remember, I'm a city kid who doesn't tend to know much about exotic species.) I gather from a second google search that buffalo is kosher but controversial for some reason; I didn't investigate. I would expect buffalo that has been slaughtered in accordance with kosher laws to be rare, but that's not an issue for milk. So ok, I can eat buffalo mozzerella. I'm glad to know that after the fact. :-)

Mystery food runner-up: today we encountered "Pittsburgh spots" on a menu. We had to ask which branch of the animal kingdom that relates to. It's a whitefish. The waitress said it was kind of like "Virginia spots", as if that would tell us anything. I assume they do not actually catch "Pittsburgh spots" in Pittsburgh; I'd be reluctant to eat anything that came out of our rivers. She didn't know why it's called that, though.

Last night at the shiva a member of Esther's congregation, who was also my calculus professor during my freshman year (he remembered me, scarily enough -- we'd run into each other a year or two ago), walked up to Dani and said something to him in Hebrew. The exchange (a few sentences) was going by too quickly for me to parse, though I did catch the word "Ivrit" (which means "Hebrew"). It turns out that Victor was asking Dani if he correctly remembered that Dani spoke Hebrew.

I think I know how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" in Hebrew, though I've probably got the verb conjugation or binyan wrong. (I don't think "binyan" has an English equivalent. Imagine that there's one verb that can mean either "tell" or "command" or "speak", depending on a grammatical tweak. A binyan is one of these forms.)

We had an On the Mark practice this afternoon, the first one post-kid (that would be

lrstrobel and

fiannaharpar's kid, not mine :-) ). Jenn didn't come because they couldn't get a babysitter, so we did some shuffling of stuff and pulled off a reasonable practice. Scheduling for the next little while is going to be tricky.

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I'm not sure if it matters, but in your quest to determine what's kosher, you may want to be precise about whether you're talking about bison or buffalo. Buffalo live in Asia and Africa (think water buffalo). Bison live in North America. They're not terribly related. This is one of those European conqueror naming errors, kind of like "American Indian".

Good point. And we don't know if the cheese is imported, so there's further ambiguity there.

But IIRC both buffalo and bison are bovine, with cloven hooves and cud. Anyway, buffalo mozzarella comes from buffalo as far as I know.

No, it has nothing to do with Buffalo, New York. The abomination we're responsible for is "Buffalo Wings". :D *Sigh!* They're CHICKEN wings! Buffalos are not birds! I've had Buffalo Burgers. I've had Buffalo Steak Tartare. And now I'm going to have to try Buffalo Mozerella. But there are no such thing as Buffalo Wings! I was tolerant when OTHER places started calling them Buffalo wings. But then local area restaurants started calling them Buffalo wings. Fortunately, Frank and Theresa's still calls them Chicken wings. There's still hope! My big complaint is carrot sticks. It used to be that you got wings with a side order of celery sticks, carrot sticks and blue cheese. Buffalo was the literally the carrot capital of the US consuming more carrots per capita than any other city in the US. And then it stopped. You can't get carrot sticks anymore, you have ask for them. I'm so disappointed.

Your post got me curious. Why wouldn't Buffalo (I'm assuming American Bison) be kosher, they chew their cud, their hooves are split and they have horns. So I checked and found this. It seems the controversy is because Buffalo isn't specifically mentioned in the Talmud. Buffalonians are well aware that Buffalo chew their cud. There's a plastic herd of them grazing around Exit 53, a souvenier of "Herd About Buffalo"

I was completely mystified the first time I encountered "buffalo wings". I'd also never been to Buffalo NY, so it took me a few minutes to draw the conclusion that "buffalo" was probably just an unfortunate locative.

Why wouldn't Buffalo (I'm assuming American Bison) be kosher, they chew their cud, their hooves are split and they have horns.

Split hooves and cud-chewing are sufficient; I just didn't know if they had both, having never really observed one before.

It seems the controversy is because Buffalo isn't specifically mentioned in the Talmud.

This strikes me as odd, because the Torah gives us a rule. (And the opinion you linked to seems to conclude that they're ok.) You sometimes see this issue with birds, because the Torah doesn't give a rule there; it lists kosher and non-kosher species, and the rabbis inferred a rule. There are a few Jews who won't eat turkey because it's not on the biblical list, but I understand this to be a minority opinion.

I think I know how to say "I don't speak Hebrew" in Hebrew, though I've probably got the verb conjugation or binyan wrong.

Same here; the way I figure it, if I said something to someone and they replied "I no spoke english" I'd get the picture...

Apparently there's also a niggling difference between m'daber ('speak', I think) and mevine ('understand'); I usually say the former, although sometimes my Israeli friends who felt like tormenting me would continue talking until I said "AND, I don't understand Hebrew". (I guess an analogy would be if someone said "I don't read english", they might still speak it.)

You have pedantic friends. :-)

I just realized that in English you can easily emphasize things as you did: "I don't speak AND I don't understand". English uses a whole word for "and", so you can stress it easily. That's got to be hard to do with a "v'" prefix. :-)

I think I'd say "Ani lo midaber Ivrit ve GAM, ani lo MEVINE Ivrit, beseder?" ("I don't talk Hebrew and ALSO, I don't UNDERSTAND Hebrew, OK?")

You have pedantic friends.

Yeah, well, they had strange delusions like the one that just because I was smart enough to be doing post-doctoral molecular biology, I should be able to speak the language of the country in which I was residing. :-)

As I understand it (from my admittedly limited knowledge of Hebrew), "ve" ("and") is a word in every essential sense. The fact that it isn't written with a space after it isn't really relevant in this connection: word separation markers developed fairly late in the history of writing, and are often rather arbitrarily placed. Notice too that no Hebrew word is written with one letter (this appears to be a rigid spelling rule, though not often stated as such), and that "'o" ("or"), having two letters, and "'aval" ("but" -- three letters) are followed by spaces, even though AFAIK they're used in essentially the same constructions as "ve".

Moral: Don't assume that "word" and "something surrounded by spaces" are synonymous.

BTW, I'd tend to say "'Ani lo' medaber(èt) 'ivrit" for your original sentence.

I was focusing more on the pronunciation effects than the whitespace. It seems that it would be hard to emphasize the "v'" in

goljerp's original sentence.

Ah; interesting point. I think emphasizing "ve" in speech would not be much harder than emphasizing "and". But I do have the impression that adding "gam" is more idiomatic for Hebrew (as if I'd know what's idiomatic for Hebrew :) ).

"Ani lo (insert verb of choice) Ivrit."

feminine verbs you can use:
yoda'at (know)
mevina (understand)
m'daberet (speak)

My favorite:
"Ani mevina rak s'fat pashoot"
(I understand only simple language)

I guess I did need it, because I came up with different grammar. I thought it would be "ani lo dabarti lashon ivrit". Ok, I can see how "lashon" is probably redundant, but I obviously don't grok verbs yet. I thought the ending of the verb ("ti" in my example) had to match up with the pronoun ("ani") in present tense. Do I have nouns and verbs confused on this point?

(I suppose this is what comes of trying to understand grammar from reading/listening to Torah readings and liturgy...)

There are fewer forms for verbs in the present tense: only four (m/f, s/pl). So the present forms of "medaber" are "medaber" (m,s), "medaberet" (f, s), "medabrim" (m, pl), and "medabrot" (f, pl).

In the past tense, there are specialized suffixes for each pronoun, and in the future tense, there are both prefixes and suffixes for each pronoun.
a

Aha. So present tense is different. Thank you!

What does the "me" prefix indicate? The verb root is "daber" (ok, dalet-beit-reish). Is "me" an indicator of present tense, or does it serve some other function?

My brain hurts.

I understand. This would be so much easier with the proper alphabet readily available. Transliteration is ambiguious. :-)

The "me" is kinda part of the root, not a prefix, per se. Not the three-letter root, but for some reason that verb has four letters in the present tense (I have no idea why; part of how a particular binyan works?).

So another verb wouldn't have "me" at the beginning. Example: lamed-mem-dalet, the learning verb, in present, would be "loamade," "loamedet," "loamdeem," "loamdot" (in a totally non-academically correct transliteration).

The first "a" (loAmade) would seem to imply the presence of an aleph (or ayin)? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Neither. I was just making sure that you read it as a long o rather than a short one, and "oa" was what I thought of as a long o sound. Sorry about that.

My understanding has been that the m' prefix in many cases but not always indicates present tense. I would put in more examples but it would take me too long to remember them properly.

To understand is "l'heveen," to speak is "l'daber,"
Present tense feminine for these is Ani mevina, ani m'daberet
Past tense first person is (ani) hevanti, deebarti

The "ti" on the end of the shoresh (root) indicates first person past tense, so "debarti" means "I spoke."

I could probably help you with beginners spoken hebrew if you're interested. I used to teach hebrew when I was in college.

With l'heveen, though, there's a "weak-hey" at the front, so the hey drops out of the present tense, whereas the dalet in l'daber remains. I don't remember all the details (my grammar isn't strong), but I think the mem acts differently in the two verbs you used as examples.
s

The mem acts identically. The difference is that "lehavin", like all weak verbs beginning with "h", drops the "h" when the "m" is prefixed (the "weak hey" that

magid mentioned -- thus "lehar'e" -> "mar'e", "lehitlabesh" -> "mitlabesh", etc.). Also, in "lehavin" and a few other verbs ("lehavi'" comes to mind) there's an irregular change of the first vowel, so "ledaber" -> "medaber", but "lehavin" -> "mevin".

"Dabartì" isn't first-person singular present tense. Actually, it's not even first-person singular perfect, since weak verbs with "a" as first vowel -- such as "ledaber" -- change it to "i" in the perfect tense. Weak verbs also take the "me-" prefix in the present, whereas strong verbs do not. Thus (capitalizing root consonants for clarity):

Infinitive		leDaBeR
Present
Masc. sing.		meDaBeR
Fem. sing.		meDaBeRèt
Masc. pl.		meDaBRim
Fem. pl.		meDaBRot
Perfect
1p. sing.	m. & f.	DiBaRtì
2p. sing.	m.	DiBaRtà
2p. sing.	f.	DiBaRt
3p. sing.	m.	DiBeR
3p. sing.	f.	DiBRa
1p. pl.	m. & f.	DiBaRnù
2p. pl.	m.	DiBaRtèm
2p. pl.	f.	DiBaRtèn
3p. pl.	m. & f.	DiBRu

I hope that's clear (and accurate)...

Thank you!

Could you explain your mapping of transltierated vowels to Hebrew vowels (particularly your use of accents)? I apologize if this is a standard notation that I'm just unaware of.

I'm following Haiim Rosén's notation in his excellent A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew. Basically, the five vowel letters are pronounced as you'd expect. The accents only indicate stress, or lack thereof, by two rules:

If there is a 'prominent' syllable (marked with an acute accent), stress it.
If not, then stress the last 'indifferent' (unmarked) syllable. Normally this will be the last syllable of the word, but many suffixes are always unstressed, and as such are marked as 'subordinate' (grave accent).

Prominent syllables don't occur too often (there are none in the paradigm I posted). The grave accents indicate that (e.g.) it's dibarnù, not **dibarnù. Does that make sense?

Ah, ok. I thought you were using punctuation to distinguish, e.g., tzere from segol and kametz from patach (and then got confused about what you might be distinguishing, say, chirik from). I assume that in this example all "e"s are segols? (err, segolim?)

Yes, all "e"s are pronounced as segol or tsere (which are apparently identical in modern Israeli Hebrew, despite having different sounds in Ashkenazic -- and probably classical -- pronunciation). The "me-" and "le-" prefixes are spelled with shva, but according to Rosén, they're not pronounced that way (Rosén uses either a superscript vowel or no vowel at all to represent the schwa value of shva, and provides rules for when to interpolate a schwa and when to pronounce consonant clusters. Apparently he doesn't consider the schwa sound a real phoneme. I tend to agree with that interpretation.)

I believe that the various tenses are used somewhat differently in classical Hebrew than in modern Hebrew, which may be the source of some of your confusion.

"Buffalo" mozzerella is a bastardization of "bufala" mozzerella, or "mozzerella di bufala." I had it while I was in Italy some years ago; it's very very mild, not nearly as salty as the mozz we get here. Here is the first English link I found about it: http://www.mozzarelladibufala.org/allestimento.htm

Interesting! Thanks for the link.

Two of the kosher butchers near me sell small quantities of "buffalo" meat (I'm not sure if it's buffalo or bison...my guess is bison). There's good reason to assume that bison are kosher, but if I had any desire to eat it, I would consult a Rav first.

I've had no desire to eat it either; I didn't realize that buffalo/bison were even "on the table", so to speak, until I started to wonder about this cheese. I'll eat cheese without a hechsher because I think rennet is far-enough removed from meat to be ok, but it hadn't occurred to me that the milk would come from sources other than cows and goats.

My mind still boggles on visualizing someone milking a bison....

I ate a bisonburger in a diner recently (I don't keep kosher). FWIW, it was delicious. Just gamy enough to be interesting and tasty. And the meat is incredibly lean, I'm told.

I too was surprised by the sudden abruptness of the Sterling season finale. However, as a mid-season replacement, it makes sense. They usually only get 12 episodes anyway.

I loved Wizards and Warriors! How can we get this released on DVD?

However, as a mid-season replacement, it makes sense. They usually only get 12 episodes anyway.

12 episodes wouldn't ahve surprised me. But I've taped the series, so I know they've only aired 8 episodes so far. I hope this doesn't mean they've decided to punt (in which case "season finale", as opposed to "finale", is inaccurate).

I loved Wizards and Warriors! How can we get this released on DVD?

Good question, and I don't know the answer. As far as I know it was never even released on videotape, so I'm guessing that probably means it will never come out on DVD. I would be delighted to be proven wrong about this.

"Thistle Hill Media" has video and DVD bootlegs of W&W (http://www.cybershire.com/~thill/page761.htm) for sale. I've no idea what their quality is actually like; they were just the most promising hit on a 15 minute or so search.

The most useful fan site seems to be href://www.wizardsandwarriors.org , which even managed to score a "yeah, you can drop my name" from series creator Don Reo.

What was he like?
    Who?
Vulkar the barbarian.
    Oh, he was big . . . and strong . . .and evil.
Ah, like Blackpool.
    No, no - much worse! I mean, Blackpool's evil but he's not evil looking. You
know.
    He has that nice, soft hair and... those piercing eyes and . . . dimples . . .
    all those muscles. He wears those shiny black shirts . . . with those leather
    things . . . boots . . .
Chains . . .
Both look dreamily into the distance. Ariel starts and looks flustered, as
does Cassandra.
    Boy, it's warm in here.
I thought it was me.

Thanks for the pointers. And the memories prompted by the excerpt. :-)

Lee Gold's unauthorized continuation of the story is at http://www.geocities.com/colmahouse/leeindex.html . I haven't been able to find a copy without the inconvenient two-column formatting. (AFAIK she's not the one who hosts the site or did the HTML.) I really enjoyed reading these when she was publishing them in the 80s; I haven't re-read the web version yet.

Yes, it is possible to get kosher bison meat.
It is also possible, through artificial insemination, to interbreed cattle and bison. The resulting animal is (seriously) called a 'beefalo', but I belive it is a mule.

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Pedanticism: Buffalo vs. Bison

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Buffalo Mozzerella

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Not that you need this

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Kosher Buffalo?

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Television

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Kosher Bison