The Meaning of ‘Semicha’
How did a word that means “leaning” become the way to describe the act of becoming a rabbi?
From the Newsletter | Can Hebrew Be Gender-Neutral?
Holy or not, Hebrew has always been an evolving language.
Ask the Rabbis | Do People Become More Jewish as They Get Older?
We asked our team of rabbis to weigh in.
Jewish Word | When the Past Is Present and the Present Is Past
We Jews are obsessed with history. From ancient to modern times, from the Flood to the Exodus to the destruction of the Temples and the exiles, from the Middle Ages to the Inquisition and the pogroms to the Holocaust to the establishment of the State of Israel, we recall and retell our history.
Jewish Word | Emet
Suppose you’ve made a golem, a man-shaped figure of clay, and you want to bring it to life.
Italian Jews: Rome, the Renaissance and Beyond
A new museum in the medieval city of Ferrara illuminates more than two millennia of history. But it has yet to directly grapple with the Holocaust.
What I Learned by Teaching Hebrew to Asylum Seekers in Israel
When my friend Heidi Gleit asked last summer for volunteers to teach a weekly Hebrew reading-and-writing evening class to Eritrean and Darfurian asylum seekers in the Israeli town of Lod, I agreed immediately.
Is This Mysterious Language Hebrew?
The Voynich manuscript is not written in any known language, and its 35 or so unique symbols have never been seen elsewhere.
Can Hebrew Be Gender-Neutral?
Gender in Hebrew—as in Spanish, Hindi, French and other languages—is intimately woven into word construction. “Hebrew goes a lot further,” says Erez Levon, a professor of sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University of London who focuses on questions of gender and sexuality. He explains that the language is particularly restrictive because gender is conveyed through masculine or feminine verb, adjective and adverb endings and almost every other part of speech.
Book Review | What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew
In What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew, Naomi Sokoloff and Nancy Berg, both professors of Hebrew and comparative literature, successfully present a number of lenses through which the wondrous revival of the Hebrew language—and its current decline on American college campuses—can be viewed.
After Eurovision, Netanyahu’s Translation Transgression
Bibi was just trying to be cool. When congratulating Israeli contestant Netta Barzilai for her Eurovision song, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent her a tweet. It worked in Hebrew. “Netta, Kapara alayich” he wrote.
Book Review // Babel in Zion
Babel in Zion:Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920–1948 by Liora R. Halperin / Yale University Press / 2014, pp. 328, $40