cellio | Entries tagged with hebrew

More midrash (with some commentary) about God talking to Moshe at the bush. Why this sign? How did God speak? And was Moshe's reaction good or bad?

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More about burning thornbushes:

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Rabbi Symons and I have continued to study midrash, but I fell off the wagon when it came to posting translations. When I was only a little behind I had some notion that I would catch up. But no, those things never get better with time. :-) We just started our third series, so I'm going to just start here. (The first was the akeidah and the second was the crossing of the sea of reeds. Now we're doing the beginning of Moshe's leadership.)

As before, I'm generally trying to translate pretty closely, rather than finding the phrasing that flows most smoothly in English, because part of the point is to improve my language skills. Well, except for the parts where I waved my hands more broadly because I got the gist just fine but fell down on some individual words. As always, comments, corrections, and improvements are most welcome.

And let me just praise Rabbi Symons here: not only did he make me nice large photocopies of this text (the original lines were maybe 3" wide -- tiny font), but he cut out and taped together all the resulting pieces to make nice continuous columns for me! That's kindness!

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Scene: I have turned one of Dani's tapes of Israeli dances into MP3s and am typing (well, pasting) in song titles.

Me: Does "Haman" mean something other than the villain in the book of Ester?
Dani: Desert food.
Me: Oh good. "Ta'am Haman" had the potential to be highly disturbing...
Dani: Nothing good could come from the direction you were going.
Me: I know. Maybe next time you could help me out with capitalization or punctuation or something?

That said, I'm not sure there is a consistent way to transliterate definite articles that get pasted onto the front of the noun. Sometimes you see something like "ha-man" or (in a title) "HaMan", but not always.

(If you've read this far and don't know what I'm talking about, "man" is the manna that the Israelites ate in the desert for 40 years, and "ta'am" means "taste" or "flavor".)

The guy at the deli counter was complaining that "tongue" is spelled weirdly, and I said something to the effect that borrowings from other languages are often a little counter-intuitive. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Him: What other languages do you know?
Me: None well, alas.
Him: (fast Hebrew)
Me: Dabeir lei'at, b'vakashah?
Him: At mevinah Ivrit? (This was definitely also a simplification of the prior utterance.)
Me: Ivrit shel torah (shrug gesture) kein yacholet l'kria, aval Ivrit l'omeir, ktzat. (I am certain that this utterance demonstrated the truth of the latter clause. :-) )
Him: kein, kein.

And then we switched back to English and I said I read better than I speak/hear but no, I wouldn't say I know Hebrew...

For future reference, how would I refer to the modern language (as opposed to biblical)? The best I can think of is "Ivrit shel ha-yom", which is probably, at best, "quaint". :-)

I have book lust that I can't immediately satisfy. Imrei Madrich is a copy of the torah text that shows the root of every word. Because it's not always obvious, and it would be a big help. Google found me someone who wrote about it on a mailing list, but I haven't found anyone who's selling it yet. I guess I'll call the local Jewish bookstore and see what they can do for me. (Do any of you know this book? Should I be looking for it under a different name?)

Apropos of that, I love studying with both of my rabbis. It is so cool that I get to do this. With one (known as "my rabbi") I'm studying talmud (and occasional other stuff), and with the other I'm reading midrash in Hebrew and not completely sucking at translation. :-) (Though I still have a long way to go.)

Speaking of my congregation (sort of), we are having a talent show in January, and the song I'm writing/arranging for it seems to be going well. kayre rocks for giving me some really great feedback on the piano part. I was also trying to get a quartet together for a Salamone Rossi piece (the organizer encouraged me even though I'm doing the other thing), but altos (among congregants) seem to be particularly elusive at the moment, so that might not work out.

Also speaking of my congregation, we sell Giant Eagle gift cards at face value and get a cut. (I know other congregations do this too.) If you're local and inclined to help us out in this, and we see each other frequently enough for it to work out, I would be happy to turn your check made out to the congregation into gift cards. Just ask.

Speaking not at all about my congregation now, a question for the "Stargate: SG-1" fans out there: do we eventually get an explanation for why almost everyone on various distant worlds speaks English, or am I supposed to just ignore that? The conceit is that many of these folks are humans who were taken from Earth, but that was thousands of years ago. Just wondering, since this show doesn't bother with the conceit of a universal translator. (Which is fine, since the show that did didn't always use it correctly. :-) )

(If you're reading the series and wonder what happened to session 12, it was fully consumed in preparing for a beit-midrash session we taught jointly on the stuff covered in session 11. I knew that the beit midrash that day would have three segments, with one rabbi involved in each; I did not know in advance that mine was the only team-taught one. So yeah, three rabbis and me... no pressure. :-) )

Anyway, we are now going to talk about the ram that's caught in the thicket.

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More Akeidah midrash translation behind the cut. This time: more about the intervention of the angel, and Avraham finally speaks up.

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The last two sessions were shorter than usual so I'm combining them here. As usual, I'm choosing literal translation over the best (English) phrasing, since the main point is for me to improve my Hebrew.

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This session was actually a few weeks ago (things have been hectic).

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Mac update: I can't connect the printer to one machine and print from the other (either direction), but at least they're close enough together that I can move the USB cable as needed. There's also a weird, loud chirping noise when it's in sleep mode; word on the net is that this happens sometimes when peripherals are plugged in, which seems weird. I normally have USB connections for keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, and printer, and am not really interested in changing any of that. A couple nights ago I left my iPod plugged in to charge and it didn't chirp; weird. I'm not sure plugging in the iPod every night is really good for its battery, though. But pulling the speaker cable and plugging it back in when using the machine is also a hassle.

Oh, and if anybody can get me Windows-style file sorting in Finder (directories then files, but alphabetically within those two groups), I'll be in your debt. "Sort by kind" violates the second part of that. The common motif on the net seems to be "this isn't Windows", which is true but unhelpful. My legacy file structure evolved the way it did in large part because of how it sorted.

More midrash from Sefer Aggadah and my attempts to translate.

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When last we left our heroes, Avraham and Yitzchak were on their way to the sacrifice and the satan was stirring up trouble between them. Continuing:

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More midrash on the Akeidah, including what Avraham told Sarah about his plans.

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This is the second midrash we looked at in this session. (I previously knew this one, but reading it in Hebrew was still educational.)

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Rabbi Symons (he says I may use his name here) and I continued our one-on-one midrash study this week, continuing with the Akeidah (binding of Yitzchak). In addition, I learned some new grammar and have some new questions.

This entry covers one of the two midrashim we studied (why does God say "please"?).

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Last week I wrote about my first study session with our newest rabbi, but I didn't cover everything. After the midrash I previously wrote about we started a longer one.

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A while ago our newest rabbi said that he was agreeable to some one-on-one study. (Hey, he implied it; I didn't just ambush him out of nowhere with the question.) I said I'd like to improve my text-reading skills; he pulled out a (Hebrew) copy of Sefer Aggadah and asked if I recognized it. Sure do, I said; I have that vast collection of midrash in English. He likes midrash too, so he proposed that we study that.

We had our first session this week. This is going to be nifty! (And now I've just had to slightly rename my "study with my rabbi" tag. :-) )

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There are still some focused entries I want to write about NHC (at least two), but in the meantime, some shorter bits:

I saw a T-shirt there that said "good grammar costs nothing". That sentiment appeals to me on its own, but I've been noticing something else since I came home: I am finally inclined to not add "imahot" and "imoteinu" in all the places that the Reform siddur has added those words. The traditional prayers refer to (e.g.) "avoteinu", literally "our fathers", but I understand it more generally -- especially if you then go on to name some who are women. Hebrew doesn't have gender-neutral words -- so if in English I accept that "he" can be neuter, how much the moreso should I accept this in Hebrew? I've been told by people who know more about Hebrew than I do that these additions are structurally unsound from a grammatical perspective, but (despite it setting off my PC alarms) I've gone along with it. Now, after trying on the original phrasing for a while, I think I'm prepared to say that I don't make those additions except when leading in a community that expects them. (Just to be clear: I do insert the names Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah in the avot prayer. But I don't think we need to say "avoteinu v'imoteinu" everywhere as well.)

It occurred to me (too late to do anything about it) that the NHC institute would be a good environment in which to "try on" observances that I'm not sure I'm ready for. If I experiment "back home" with something like tzitzit, for instance, then there will be people (at least one even if I wear them in) who will notice right away, so there's a level of apparent commitment there. If I then decide that no, I'm not going to do this, I have to "unwind" that. On the other hand, if I try it for a week among people I'll mostly never see anywhere else, no harm done if it doesn't stick. I should remember this.

Note to self: NHC dress code is casual, including on Shabbat. You can dress up for Shabbat, but you don't need to. The two things I regret allocating limited carry-on-luggage space to are dressier clothers and a Hebrew-English Tanakh. I needed the latter for classes, but mine is hefty and maybe I could have arranged to borrow from a local?

A collection of posts about NHC institute is here.

I'm home from the National Chavurah Committee gathering (which I've come to think of informally as "JewCon"). As you might have guessed, I didn't write entries while there, so you get a dump in arbitrary order now. :-)

(Also, I won't be able to catch up on LJ. If I haven't already commented on something you wanted me to see, please ping me? Thanks.)

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I learned today that there is a full-service gas station on my way to/from work. I didn't know we had any of those locally. It's been years (probably decades); what is the conventional tip?

As I pulled up to an intersction (all-way stop), someone from the cross street was backing through the intersection. After backing into the space in front of my car, he immediately popped into drive and went through the intersection. Whose turn was that, the cross-street or mine? :-)

I have occasionally noticed (because of tracking/RSS feeds or because I viewed the journals directly) posts to LJ that did not show up on my friends page. Is this happening to anyone else? I haven't detected a pattern yet.

Why does Hebrew have two words for "open" that differ only (apparently) in what objects they take? It's peh-kuf-chet when talking about eyes and ears, and peh-taf-chet for anything else.

Ok, you guys were right: Heroes rocks, at least so far. I picked up the first season recently; I was hooked after two episodes and have seen six so far. It looks like the second season will be released on DVD in August, which means I won't have too long a wait. Increasingly, I'm coming to think that this is the way to watch most TV shows. (I should also be able to return the first season of Lost to the person who lent it to me and exchange it for the second season soon.) Still, I want to get an antenna up on the roof too. (Note to self.)

We've been having some modem troubles (two modems with different failure modes), so we ordered another recently to experiment with. It looks like we have a family of modems -- maybe a breeding program. given the evidence, I'd have to say that Westel-ness is a dominant gene. :-)

My vet wanted to see Erik recently (just a quick check on something), so while we were there I asked if she could try again to teach me how to push pills into him. (Currently he gets his medicine ground up in canned food, as I seem unable to reliably get a whole pill down.) She demonstrated, then had me try... and she finally said "it's ok; mixing it into the food won't hurt him". I feel inadequate; even my vet gave up on me. :-) (Yes, I have tried that plunger-like gadget. I haven't found the cat treats that have pockets for hiding pills in, but I suspect he's too smart for that.)

A bakery run on the honor system seems not to be loosing money. Interesting idea. (Someone on my reading list posted this link, but I forget who.)

I have a question for the Hebrew-literate. Please humor me. How would you say "I will thank you" (masculine, singular)? I thought I knew, and then I heard a different formation in a song, so I asked a native speaker, who provided a third option. (I think "odecha", song was "odeka", speaker said "odelecha". It's entirely possible that "odecha" is biblical and "odelecha" is modern, but what's with "odeka"?)

The torah (Deut 21:18-21) talks about the case of the ben soreir umoreh, the "stubborn and rebellious son". This is a capital offense; the rabbis were not eager to carry out death sentences, so they read this pretty closely looking for restrictions, which they found.

One of the lines of reasoning derives from the declaration the parents (both of them) must make about how he does not listen to "koleinu", our voice. It says voice, not voices, and this leads to questions about whether the parents used the same phrasing, the same diction, the same pitch, and so on. If the torah meant "kolloteinu" it would have said so, the rabbis reason.

This got me wondering a bit about language. You generally make a singular noun possessive by appending the right suffix (maybe with vowel tweaks), like "-nu" for "our". "Av" = father, "avinu" = our father, "avot" = fathers, "avoteinu" = our fathers. However, it doesn't work quite the same for masculine-form [1] nouns; "shir" = song, "shirim" = songs, "shireinu" = our... song? songs? There is no "shirimeinu" or "shirimnu" or the like; you don't see that construct. (Or so I have been taught, and it matches my experience. If you know otherwise please tell me.) What this seems to say is that for a masculine-form noun, the number in the possessive case is not absolutely, grammatically unambiguous.

Which leads me to wonder: was the ben soreir umoreh saved, in part, by a feminine noun? :-)

[1] I'm saying "masculine-form" rather than "masculine" because I used the "av" example, which I chose for familiarity. "Av" is masculine, but it follows the grammatical forms of feminine nouns.

( Hebrew )

( talmud class )

( intensive study? )

( individual study )

Monica

midrash session 3.3

midrash session 3.2

midrash session 3.1

yes we talk like this (Hebrew edition)

yup, conversational skills are still minimal

random bits

midrash session 13

midrash session 11

midrash sessions 9 and 10

midrash session 8 (and a hardware update)

midrash session 7

midrash session 6

midrash, session 5

midrash session 4

midrash session 3

midrash session 2 (part 2)

midrash session 2 (part 1)

studying midrash, part 2

studying midrash

(NHC) shorter takes

NHC round-up (part 1)

some light questions

random bits

precise language

assorted Jewish education

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