torah translation

I chanted torah this morning and, as I did last time, I translated from the scroll instead of reading it out of a chumash. This time I explicitly asked my checker to also check me on translation, which seemed to work well. I was less nervous this time but still fumbled in places; biblical Hebrew has a lot of verb-subject orderings, so when translating into English you have to read ahead sometimes. I also stumbled over "ito" (with him) and "oto" (him, direct object), which are identical without the vowels. (You have to know enough grammar to just know.)

Here is approximately my translation of the fifth aliya of Vayeishev. As before, I'm translating this fresh as I type, and no two of my renditions are exactly the same.

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Vayeishev (d'var torah)

( This week's d'var torah )

family visit

We visited my family this afternoon and did the "December gift exchange", since by the time I get back from Israel my nephew will have returned to college.

There is something delightfully ironic about receiving a volume of Rashi (B'reishit) as a Christmas gift. :-) This edition (suggested to me in a comment on a previous post; thanks!) is as nice as it appears to be from the web page. The remaining volumes are definitely in my future. My father commented, on noting my enthusiasm, that he knows what to do for the next four gift-giving occasions, so if I buy any on my own I guess I should find a way to mention that. (I'll probably go ahead and order the next book, Sh'mot, soon and wait on the rest.)

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