Hebrew Language Research Articles

478 Validation of the hebrew version of the prolapse and incontinence knowledge questionnaire (PIKQ) during pregnancy

Pregnancy and delivery have a major effect on Pelvic Floor Disorders (PFD). Assessing knowledge regarding PFD in childbearing age women will enable women to make more informed decisions regarding perinatal care, and seek appropriate medical advice once PFD have developed. The Prolapse and Incontinence Knowledge Questionnaire (PIKQ) is a simple questionnaire assessing women's knowledge regarding urinary incontinence (UI) and pelvic organ prolapse (POP). Validation of a Hebrew version for the PIKQ has never been carried out. The purpose of this study was to validate the psychometric characteristics of the PIKQ in the Hebrew language. Translation of the PIKQ to the Hebrew language was performed according to international recommended guidelines. A cross sectional study of pregnant women was conducted from June to September 2020 in the Soroka University Medical Center, Israel, with the recommended 10:1 ratio between the number of subjects and the number of items in the questionnaire (n=24). A total of 240 third trimester pregnant women have completed the Hebrew version of the PIKQ. Construct validity, criterion validity and reliability tests were performed. Factor analysis for both domains of the Hebrew version of the PIKQ demonstrated 12 strong positive factor loadings to one principal factor in each domain (FL>0.3). The Hebrew PIKQ had an internal consistency, with Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.748 for the UI domain and 0.793 for the POP domain. Significant correlations were found between women's perceived knowledge of UI and POP to PIKQ scores. The Hebrew version of the PIKQ is a new, reliable, consistent, and valid instrument to examine the level of knowledge regarding PFD in Hebrew speaking pregnant women. This instrument may be used to assess women's knowledge about pelvic floor disorders and the need for educational interventions that can improve the level of knowledge and enable women to make informed decisions about perinatal care.

The ‘return’ of a diasporic Hebrew literary culture in Berlin

ABSTRACT The increase in Israeli emigration and Israeli dual citizenship over the past fifteen years has created growing expatriate communities and Hebrew literary production outside of Israel. The emigration of fiction writers, poets, academics, essayists, artists and the creation of Hebrew language literary periodicals, libraries, and schools in Berlin have sought to challenge central tenets of cultural Zionism which tie the development of Hebrew language to Eretz Yisrael and Hebrew literary production to Israeli national literature.

From Jerusalem to Athens by Nurit Yaari

Reviewed by: From Jerusalem to Athens by Nurit Yaari Shiraz Biggie FROM JERUSALEM TO ATHENS. By Nurit Yaari. Oxford University Press. 2018. 480 pp. Hardcover and ebook, $140.00. Discussions of Israeli theatre, and Jewish theatre in general, often begin with the Talmudic prohibition against the theatre sparked by the encounter and rejection of Hellenism. Nurit Yaari’s book, From Jerusalem to Athens, is no exception, but builds from the idea that the Jewish rabbinical tradition (Jerusalem) and the classical tradition (Athens) are critical and often intertwined influences on Israel’s modern theatre. Yaari argues the contemporary encounter with classical Greek theatre has influenced Israeli artists to address questions of identity and “engage in an intellectual, artistic, and political dialogue with both Jewish culture (the particular) and classical Greek drama (the universal)” (p. 7). From the very beginning, Yaari establishes the role of Greek theatre as a “universal” to be reckoned with through a specific production. In her introduction, she situates the origins of Hebrew theatre with efforts dating back to the Italian Renaissance and Enlightenment periods that combined classical Greek drama elements with the Hebrew language. After establishing this precedent, the book focuses on productions staged either just before or within the modern State of Israel. Yaari’s work is expansive, looking at three types of productions: first, those directly following and using the Greek texts in translation; second, those created by theatrical artists across other traditions that are in dialogue with Greek drama (Anouilh, etc.); and, finally and critically, those native Israeli-written dramas inspired by Greek texts. The book is most exciting and illuminating in discussing the latter, offering significant new insights and approaches to the works in question. The book’s chapter organization is based on particular points of inquiry, such as chapters that explore a theatrical company, a specific Greek or Israeli playwright, conflict, or directorial approaches. Her book traces and frames the theatre of Israel in relation to “Athens” and how this interchange allowed for rich experimentation for Israeli theatre makers. Underlying her book is the broad question of theatre history—why this particular play here and now? Thus, many of the individual chapters are directly related to wars and conflicts in which Israel has played a part and seek to make arguments beyond not only the theatre itself, but on a changing Israeli society. Her book’s strength and weakness lie in this comprehensive mapping of “Athens” onto the “Jerusalem” of Israeli theatre. Yaari looks at 70 years of Israeli theatre (1945–2015), covering 22 Greek plays and touching on approximately 86 productions. Periodically, this [End Page 604] expansiveness obscures an overall through-line to the manuscript in favor of specific chapter arguments. The book occasionally places different productions in conjunction with contemporary Israeli events; the author does not always provide enough context on these events for the reader who is less familiar with Israeli society. As a contribution to the study of Israeli theatre, using the argument that the encounter between “Athens” and “Jerusalem” has been fruitful, the book offers a new way of viewing Israeli drama and its significant figures and adds to the growing English-language scholarship that aims to take Israeli theatre beyond its diasporic origins. One of Yaari’s methodological strengths, which allows her to intertwine a production’s reception with its cultural context, focuses on staging rather than only the play texts. She includes not only the play’s translation but a comprehensive discussion of all the elements of theatrical language, using production photos, designs, interviews, and reviews to piece together a picture of the theatrical event. She also draws on her own vast experience with and reception of many of the productions included. This multifaceted approach helps establish for the readera strong impression oftheactualproductions that are importantto her overall analysis. This approach also helps clarify the line between critical and audience response that marks not only the individual productions, but also the theatre culture of Israel more generally. The first two chapters approach two of Israel’s most well-known theatres, Habima (Israel’s National Theatre) and the Cameri (Tel Aviv’s municipal theatre), looking at their first attempts at classical drama in the mid-1940s...

The Uncanny Meeting Point of Languages: Hebrew in G. Shofman and David Vogel’s Vienna

G. Shofman and David Vogel wrote beautiful literature from the multilingual Vienna in the interwar period. Seemingly, they wrote monolingual Hebrew texts, but this Hebrew encodes all the other languages, and all the gaps, all the places that the chosen language cannot reach. The diverse usage of languages in the Hebrew texts was not (just) a result of a forced lingual situation but also held great poetic values.Reading Shofman and Vogel’s Hebrew prose texts today is not a fluent read, because of gaps that affect the reading: (1) periodical gaps are when the text mentions names, events and situations that were clear to readers at the time of publication, but will not be understood today without context. The second are the (2) spatial gaps: the text describes a space that the reader does not know, and so, if it contains poetic values, they will not be understood. The (3) lingual gaps that can be syntactical but mainly lexical. The most interesting gaps are (4) the unheimlich gaps, the uncanny feeling when the known and the unknown, the safe and the threatening meet in order to create the meta‑lingual meaning of the text, and change its poetic values.This paper demonstrates the presence of these four gaps in one short story by G. Shofman (In time of crisis), and in a novel written by David Vogel (Married life). In particular, to show what impact does the language(s) of the text have on past and current readers, and the way the authors express their attitude regarding the Hebrew language.

The Question of St. Jerome’s Translation ex Hebraica veritate: the Example of Deut. 8:15

This article offers yet another opinion concerning the 18th-century controversy surrounding St. Jerome’s level of knowledge of Hebrew and his Old Testament translation from the Hebrew truth (ex Hebraica veritate). Assurances that Jerome’s Latin rendition is based directly on the Hebrew biblical books made by the monk himself and by his contemporaries are widely challenged. Jerome’s testimony is not entirely credible as he tended to confabulate and prevaricate. Having retraced this dispute about the Stridon-born scholar, the authors of this article subject verse 8:15 of the Book of Deuteronomy to a thorough analysis. It is a peculiar and important fragment for the ongoing discussion due to the appearance of the Hebrew word צִמָּאוֹן . In the Greek version (LXX), it had been translated as δίψα (“dry land”). What is crucial here is the fact that a similar form, διψάς, exists in the Greek language. It is a term used for a venomous snake. Potentially mistaking “dry land” for a “snake” in the Hebrew language is not possible. That is why in Jerome’s translation of the Bible from the Hebrew truth such an error should not have occurred. Meanwhile, we can find exactly that mistake in the scholar’s rendition. In his Latin translation Jerome introduced the dipsas snake in lieu of the Hebrew צִמָּאוֹן (“dry land”). This article aims to explain why, in this very spot, the translator departed from the Hebrew original.

Introduction and General

Introduction and General Christopher T. Begg, Brent A. Strawn, Fred W. Guyette, Malcolm Rosenberg, Atilla Bodor, and David Yoder 799. [The Storm God and the Sea] Noga Ayali-Darshan, The Storm-God and the Sea. The Origin, Versions, and Diffusion of a Myth throughout the Ancient Near East (tr. Liat Keren; ORA 37; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). Pp. xxi + 282. €109. ISBN 978-3-16-155954-9. The tale of the combat between the Storm-god and the Sea that began circulating in the early 2nd millennium b.c.e. became one of the best-known ANE myths. Its widespread dissemination in distinct versions across disparate locations and time periods—Syria, [End Page 276] Egypt, Anatolia, Ugarit, Mesopotamia, and Israel—calls for analysis of all the textual variants, in order to determine its earliest form, geo-cultural origin, and transmission history. In undertaking this task, A.-D. examines such documents as the Astarte Papyrus, the Pišaiša Myth, the Songs of Hedammu and Ullikummi, the Baal Cycle, Enūma eliš, and pertinent biblical texts (e.g., Habakkuk 3; Psalm 18//2 Samuel 22; and Job 41). She interprets these and other related writings philologically according to their provenance and comparatively in the light of parallel texts. The examination of a story that appears in all ANE cultures also calls for a discussion of the theology, literature, and history of those societies and the way each shaped its version of the myth. [Adapted from published abstract.] A.-D.'s volume goes back to a Hebrew publication of 2016 that itself originated as her Hebrew University of Jerusalem dissertation of 2012–2013. It consists of an introduction ("The Ancient Tale of the Storm's Combat with Sea"), followed by seven chapters, each with their component sub-sections: (1) Egyptian Literature; (2) Hurro-Hittite Literature; (3) Ugaritic Literature; (4) Babylonian Literature; (5) Biblical Literature; (6) Inner Syrian Literature; and (7) The Evolution of the Story of the Storm-god's Combat with Sea in the Ancient Near East (this consisting of four main sections, i.e. A. The Sources According to Their Provenance; B. The Distribution of the Motifs; C. The Development of the Tale Type; and D. Epilogue). The volume comes with a variety of tables, diagrams, and illustrations, a map of the ANE, an extensive bibliography, and three indexes (names, places, references).—C.T.B. 800. [Biblical Archaeology] John D. Currid, The Case for Biblical Archaeology. Uncovering the Historical Record of God's Old Testament People (Phillipsburg, NJ: R&R Publishing, 2020). Pp. xviii + 263. Paper $29.99. ISBN 978-1-62995-360-1. This volume, by a long-time practitioner in the field, provides a copiously illustrated account of the ANE context of the "Land of the Bible," the main regions of that land, and key aspects of ancient Israel's life. The volume opens with a foreword by David W. Chapman, and a preface by C. It continues with an introduction (chap. 1), followed by three main parts, each consisting of a series of chapters (each chapter concludes with a listing of key terms, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading). Part 1: Setting contains chaps. 2–5, entitled respectively: Geography of the Land of the Bible; The Archaeological Study of the Land of the Bible; Tell Excavations; and A Short History of the Lands of the Bible. Next, Part 2: A Journey through the Land features chaps. 6–12: Galilee/The Sea of Galilee Region; The Jezreel Valley; The Negev; The Shephelah; The Jordan River Valley; The Southern Coastal Plain; and The Central Highlands. Thereafter, Part 3: Aspects of Society comprises chaps. 13–19: Agriculture and Herding; Water; Architecture; Ceramics; The Hebrew Language in Archaeology; Burial Practices; and Small Finds. The volume concludes with three appendixes (Basic Timeline of the Ancient Near East; The Kings of Israel and Judah; Extrabiblical References to the Kings of Israel and Judah), a glossary, select bibliography, plus indexes of Scripture and Subjects and Names.—C.T.B. 801. [City Gate in Ancient Israel and the ANE] Daniel A. Frese, The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism...

“We Don’t Understand this Present”: Shimon Adaf’s Shadrach and the Possibilities of Hebrew Language

In this article, I wish to present Shimon Adaf’s post‑apocalyptic novella, Shadrach, and the two ways in which it represents Hebrew language: as a memory or relic of the past on one hand, and as a source of constant renewal on the other. What I would like to claim is that only through meaningful encounter with an Other, a synthesis between the past and the future can occur, making innovation of Hebrew language possible.

Language Memoir: A Return to Hebrew

Language Memoir:A Return to Hebrew Sheila E. Jelen Review of: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (And What It Means to Americans) ( Seattle, University of Washington, 2018), edited by Naomi B. Sokoloff and Nancy E. Berg In compelling essays that range from literary meditations to pedagogical prescriptions, from literary analysis to personal memoir, What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (And What It Means to Americans) presents itself as the fruit of a new discursive community, one that is unique to Americans in the field of Hebrew studies. This volume brings together a group of contemporary scholars, novelists, and poets to speak to the question of how to re-engage Americans – children as well as college students, synagogue goers as well as secularists – in the study of Hebrew. What We Talk About is an invitation to Americans, like myself, who have straddled countries and languages, have found themselves teaching materials in American classrooms that don't always match up with the in-depth research they are doing in Hebrew, to tell their stories and to brainstorm future directions. In her own contribution to What We Talk About, Sokloff points to memoirs by "multi-lingual individuals who come to terms with incorporating more than one language into their lives," such as those authored by Richard Rodriguez, Eva Hoffman, Alice Kaplan, and Aharon Appelfeld.1 She encourages those whose native tongue is not Hebrew, but who have followed a Hebrew path, emotionally, academically and spiritually, to write "language memoirs" as well. In that spirit I would like to begin this review with my own, abbreviated, language memoir. All four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors who had chosen to move to the United States instead of to Israel in the years after the war because [End Page 445] they felt that they had suffered enough. Subsequently, a generation later, I was born in the United States, but when I was about a year old, we moved to Israel. My brother was born just after the Yom Kippur war and my parents decided to leave Israel and return to Chicago, where I was raised. Whatever Hebrew fluency I had obtained in my day care environments in Israel was soon lost. When I pronounced Hebrew with an Israeli accent at my orthodox Jewish day school in Chicago, the children laughed at me, so I retrained myself to speak with an American accent. My education was profoundly Zionist – with many summers at Camp Moshava, a Bnei Akiva camp in nearby Wisconsin, and half a day from kindergarten through 12th grade dedicated to Hebrew and Judaic Studies. I remember the first Hebrew conversation I learned to conduct: Teacher: Shalom, Mah Shmekh? [Hello, What is your name?] Me: Shmi Shulamit. [My name is Shulamit] Teacher: Me'ayin at Shulalmit? [Where are you from Shulamit] Me: Ani Mi-America. Me-Ayin Ata? [I am from America. Where are you from?] Teacher: Ani Mi-Yisrael [I am from Israel] My formative Hebrew language experience took place in high school at Ida Crown Jewish Academy where my teacher, Mrs. Bass, refused to call me by my actual name (Shulamit) for all four years; instead, she called me Yocheved. In Mrs. Bass's class I read Agnon for the first time ("Tehilah" and "ha-Mitpahat"); I read Bialik ("El ha-Tzipor" and "ha-Matmid,"); I read Tchernichovsky ("ha-Adam Eino Elah"); I read Yizhar ("Efraim Hozer la-Aspeset"). I learned to conjugate verbs in every declension with every exception and to insert vowels into Hebrew texts. I took the Bechinah Yerushalmit. I joined my close friends at Camp Ramah the summer after high school but since I hadn't attended that camp as a camper, I didn't really have a natural peer group there. Instead, I became close to the group of Israelis who were dispatched by the Jewish Agency to work at the waterfront and in the woodshop, to lead religious services and Hebrew sing-alongs. I learned in one particularly awkward conversation that there is a difference between "lehitkaleah" (to shower) and "le-hitlakeah" (to burst into flames). I learned, as well, that "mah nishma" does not mean "what is heard...

Secularism and Hermeneutics by Yael Almog

Reviewed by: Secularism and Hermeneutics by Yael Almog Brandon Bloch Secularism and Hermeneutics. By Yael Almog. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. 216. Cloth $65.00. ISBN 978-0812251258. The past three decades have witnessed a sea change in scholarship on secularism and secularization. If once-dominant narratives described the evacuation of religion from modern public life, theorists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood have redefined secularism as a tool of governance by which modern states seek to harness and regulate acceptable forms of religious expression. At the same time, historians of eighteenth-century Europe—the fulcrum on which traditional understandings of secularization rest—have challenged simplistic oppositions of religion and Enlightenment. Works such as Jonathan Sheehan's The Enlightenment Bible (2005) and David Sorkin's The Religious Enlightenment (2008) have shown instead how reappropriations of religious texts have shaped new concepts of citizenship, culture, and law. In Secularism and Hermeneutics, Yael Almog synthesizes and advances this wide-ranging literature to contend that modern hermeneutics, often considered the quintessential practice of secular interpretation, emerged out of Enlightenment-era religious conflict. Blending readings of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, and others with pointed interventions in contemporary theory, Almog invites readers to rethink not only commonplaces about the Enlightenment but also their own interpretive practices. At the core of Secularism and Hermeneutics lies an analysis of Enlightenment efforts to read the Bible not as a sacred text of revelation, but as a universal document of human culture. The novel hermeneutics that arose in the German-speaking Enlightenment, Almog argues, centered around a new vision of the Bible as the basis for a universal reading community. Efforts to achieve this community, however, foundered on the confessional diversity of German societies, exemplified in the battle over Jewish emancipation. For the central protagonists of Enlightenment hermeneutics—the Pietist philosopher Johann Georg Hamann as well as Herder, Schleiermacher, and Hegel—the Hebrew Bible recorded the origins of humanity's religious consciousness, but its meaning had become obscured through an insular Jewish communalism. It was Christianity that gave voice to the Bible's universal core and could interpret its message for the modern state. Yet Jewish authors spoke back, seeking inclusion in the Enlightenment public sphere without abandoning their religious heritage. Almog reconstructs the emergence of modern hermeneutics from [End Page 401] the entanglements of Christian and Jewish thought, as both sides sought to mediate confessional commitments with articulations of shared humanity. The first half of the text centers on the tension between Protestant efforts to create a universal reading culture, underpinned by supersessionist logics and the defense of Jewish reading practices advanced most notably by the Orthodox Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Herder and Goethe deplored the Hebrew language as a barrier to comprehension, regarding the work of translation as both a lamentable loss of meaning and a necessary condition of universal readership. Mendelssohn, by contrast, declared Judaism a forerunner of Enlightenment toleration, with its emphasis on oral transmission and refusal to coerce belief in God. Drawing on postcolonial approaches to the encounters of Islam and Western thought, Almog characterizes Mendelssohn's position as one of "situated universalism" (91). Rather than breaking with Enlightenment universalism from the standpoint of Judaism, Mendelssohn insisted on their interdependence. Although not framed as such, Almog's reading of Mendelssohn marks a break with critical theorists of secularism such as Asad and Mahmood. While the latter seek to expose political secularism as an effort to reinscribe Protestant norms as standards of liberal citizenship, Almog argues instead that secular hermeneutics emerged in contentious negotiation among confessional models of reading, with none conclusively imposing its own standards. The book's second part shifts from philosophy to literary criticism, spotlighting how novels such as Heinrich Heine's Der Rabbi von Bacherach (1840) and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's Die Judenbuche (1842) challenged the constricted (and antisemitic) universalisms promoted by the Protestant mainstream. In Heine's novel, Almog finds a moving testament to the persistence of Jewish suffering perpetuated not only by self-imposed separation but by the scapegoating and bigotry of the Christian majority—a foil to Protestants such as Schleiermacher, who rooted Jewish difference in a lack...

Hebrew Words in the Arabic Literary Works of the Author Shokeya Mansour: Influence of the Hebrew Language or Protest of the Hebrification of Arabic

Hebrew Words in the Arabic Literary Works of the Author Shokeya Mansour: Influence of the Hebrew Language or Protest of the Hebrification of Arabic

НАЗВАНИЯ ДРАГОЦЕННЫХ КАМНЕЙ В БИБЛЕЙСКОМ, ПОСТБИБЛЕЙСКОМ, СРЕДНЕВЕКОВОМ И СОВРЕМЕННОМ ИВРИТЕ

The article examines the Hebrew names of precious stones that are mentioned in the Bible in the books of Exodus (28:17-20 and 39:10-13), Ezekiel (27:16; 18:13), partly in Job (28:2-19) and in other passages of the Bible. Those names are characterized by the fact that they do not have an exact meaning in the biblical language and today they differ from the original language and do not mean the same realities as in the Biblical era. The purpose of the article is to explore the names of precious stones in Biblical, postBiblical, medieval, and modern Hebrew. The study of precious stones in different epochs of the development of the Hebrew language is a significant issue for Semitic philology, since many of them still do not have a clear gemological identification. That study was carried out on the material of text corpora in Hebrew of different epochs of the language development in the contextual, semantic, philological (word origin) and comparative (comparisons between translations of different epochs) aspects. The study used descriptive and comparative-historical methods.

La deuxième colonne hexaplaire d’Origène (ou Secunda) et la transcription des noms propres sémitiques en grec : comparaison critique

The second column of Origen’s Hexapla (Secunda), where the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is transcribed in Greek letters, was probably not composed by Origen: it existed before the composition of the Hexapla, and it was used by the Jewish community of Caesarea to read the Old Testament in its original language. However, the Secunda is very useful for the study of the pronunciation of Hebrew language in a period preceding the vocalization of the Bible (7th-10th century ce). The Secunda thus displays some interesting linguistic phenomena of the Hebrew language. To confirm their validity, it is very important to compare them with the Greek transcriptions of Semitic proper names in the inscriptions and papyri, from the same geographical area and the same epoch (first centuries ce); from these, it is possible to infer the existence in the two sources of graphic expedients to represent the Hebrew gutturals, very characteristic phonemes of Semitic languages: this is the usage of the ε-vowel, and the lengthening of Greek vowels corresponding to an original guttural in the Hebrew word. Again, both the transcriptions of the Semitic names and the forms of the Secunda share the weakening of the nasal consonants at the end of words. Nevertheless, there are some transcriptions whose linguistic features could be linked to other reasons: for proper names, we speak about allomorphs, and concerning the transcriptions in the Secunda, when the vocalization of the Masoretic text differs from that of the Secunda, it is possible to suppose that another linguistic background and another tradition of the Hebrew language are involved. To find and understand the Hebrew phenomena in the Secunda column, it is essential to know the Greek pronunciation and the values of both the graphemes and phonemes of the language: Secunda is therefore another link between the Greek world and the Semitic world.

Why are there coming of age ceremonies at the onset of adolescence?

As is the tradition for Jewish boys, my sons had barmitzvahs when they turned 13. They underwent this rite of passage, which has happened in some form for around 700 years. In preparation, my sons learned to read the Hebrew language, learned passages from the Torah and its commentary and attended weekly classes and Saturday services to learn about traditions and practices. On their big days in front of family, friends and the broader community in the synagogue, they recited the week's Torah reading, participated in the service and explained their views on the readings' relevance to society. My first son related what he read to his childhood in Alice Springs and his early observations of social disparity. In the evening, we had a party and they gave less formal speeches. A coming of age ceremony in early adolescence is far from unique to Judaism, with around half of the world's ethnographically recorded societies in 1980 having ceremonies meeting a strict definition for initiation at this life point.1 In some cultures without formal ceremonies, there is a trend now to construct such events, filling a gap some feel to be missing in secular communities.2 For such practices to be so widespread, they must have some benefit. This paper briefly describes benefits to culture and community, individual and parents. The greatest gains of coming of age ceremonies are perhaps for the community, ahead of individual and family gain. Van Gennep noted that all rites of passage involve expression of values important to that society, theorising that rites of passage protect society from the whim of the individual, while ensuring continuity of knowledge and behaviour.3 Planned participation in services and ceremonies may be the first impetus for a child to be sent to learn about the religion or language,4 thus driving transmission of culture to the next generation. Not only are elements of culture transmitted and perpetuated,5 but in a prosocial environment participants and observers are drawn together with a sense of identity and community.6 Participation in such rituals can contribute significantly to what we call social capital.7 Identity formation is a key task of adolescence, whereby a young person needs to work out who they are, what they believe in and how they will present themselves to others. This can be described as the process by which a young person becomes ready for ‘social membership’ of society.8 To this end, a basic understanding of their family, culture and the history of both is helpful. The process of learning about traditions, language, rites and ceremonies and then participating in them serves this developmental task. In most barmitzvahs, individuals are given the opportunity to make a speech, enabling them to make a public statement about who they are and what they believe.4 Such public demonstration helps an adolescent to crystallise their understanding of who they are at that point in time. The performance aspect of coming of age ceremonies communicates much to all observers. In some societies, it may signal the point of physical maturity whereby the young person is themselves ready for childbearing, or that they are ready to contribute to physical tasks such as hunting, or to participate in other forms of communal labour. It can signal to all that an adolescent is ready to assume a useful role in the community as an individual, not just as someone else's child. This author's experience suggests that perhaps an adolescent's own parents need to witness these signals more than do others. It is no coincidence that so many cultures have a coming of age ceremony at the onset of adolescence. Puberty demarcates physical change between childhood and adulthood, with concomitant fertility, growth, physical strength and endurance all denoting increased abilities and potential usefulness to society. Rituals and ceremonies have an important place in signalling an adolescent's new status to the community, the individual and to their parents.

Moses’s Slow Speech: Hybrid Identity, Language Acquisition, and the Meaning of Exodus 4:10

Abstract In changing our focus to examine the children and the childhoods of the characters in the Bible we can gain new insights into the biblical text. This essay applies childist interpretation to a question that has long puzzled scholars: What did Moses mean when he said: “I am heavy (כבד) of speech and heavy (כבד) of tongue” (Exod 4:10). Scholars have suggested it meant Moses had a speech impediment or that he lost his ability to speak Egyptian eloquently during his years in Midian. I suggest, however, that these previous answers have overlooked a crucial stage in Moses’ development: his childhood. Moses’ unique childhood and transition from Hebrew slave child to adopted Egyptian prince creates within him a hybrid identity. His hybrid identity, in turn, manifested itself in Hebrew language attrition, which causes him to protest that he is “heavy of speech and tongue.”

Closing the Distance? Representation of European Asylum Seekers in Israeli Mainstream, Community, and Social Media

ABSTRACT This study explores the rhetoric, discourse, visual representation, and news narratives regarding asylum seekers (AS) in the European Union in Israeli media. Integrating cultural representation theory and foreign news proximity-distance approaches, this research focuses on differences in media coverage of AS in the EU between mainstream, community, and social media, and then suggests a model and theoretical implications. The sample included 340 Hebrew language news items from television, print and online newspapers, radio broadcasts, and social media posts from 2011 to 2019. A thematic analysis was conducted. Based on theory of representation, this study found that AS are presented as Others in two different ways based on media type. Community and social media seek to productively compare the Other (AS) to Israelis to encourage concern over Israeli identity and values. In contrast, mainstream media promote narratives that do not invite comparisons—either tacit or explicit—to Israel. Based on proximity-distance approaches, we found that mainstream media content is appropriated by social and community media for different rhetorical ends using a scale of proximity ranging from hostile to hospitable. Community and social media used mainly domestication rhetoric in contrast to mainstream media, which distance the issue, covering it as newsworthy.

Evidence of a T/V distinction in European Hebrew

Abstract This article presents research on the system of T/V distinction in Hebrew from the 16th to the 20th century. As the article is the first attempt to describe the phenomenon, it aims to give a general overview of the T/V distinction in European Hebrew, introducing new language data, and posing new questions. One book served as terminus a quo for the whole article: Course of the Russian Language by Zalkind (Epstein, Zalkind. 1869. Учебная книга Русскаго Языка. מסלת הלמוד או ספר ללמד לשון רוסיא עם העתקה אל לשון עברי [Course of the Russian language. Path of learning or book to study the language of Russia with translation into Hebrew]. Warsaw: Schriftgisser), written in Hebrew, contains approximately 100 pages of everyday dialogues in both Hebrew and Russian. The question of whether the Hebrew language of the 19th century was a dead or living language is still a matter of debate. In that regard, the course book provides valuable material that does not fit into the framework of the general idea of the history of the Hebrew language. Basic elements of conversational politeness are the focus of the analysis. The system, in which V-forms of address are expressed by a third-person singular, is reconstructed from the conversations in the Epstein’s book and traced back to the 16th century in a wide range of various Hebrew sources. The T/V distinction in Hebrew is also compared to the similar phenomena in Polish and German. Originating before the 16th century, the T/V distinction disappeared in modern Israeli Hebrew. However, it is still in use in some specific communication situations, which can be regarded as residues of earlier forms of traditional speech practices.

It's a dotted blue big star: on adjective ordering in a post-nominal language

ABSTRACT Referring to a specific object sometimes requires using multiple adjectives. The ordering of the adjectives is assumed to be constrained by universal hierarchies (grammatical or conceptual). It is therefore predicted that different languages will present similar ordering preferences. The ordering in languages where adjectives appear after the noun is further expected to mirror the ordering observed in languages where adjectives appear before the noun. We investigated these predictions in prenominal (English) and postnominal (Hebrew) languages, using three different tasks: production, naturalness rating, and forced-choice. English speakers showed a robust ordering preference. The preferences in Hebrew were significantly weaker. Moreover, for some of the adjective strings, the weakly preferred orders in Hebrew did not mirror the preferred order in English. We argue that constraints on adjective ordering must include additional factors beyond the suggested hierarchies, and discuss this implication in relation to differences between prenominal and postnominal languages.

Martin Luther’s Use of Blended Hebrew and German Idioms in His Translation of the Hebrew Bible

AbstractThis article investigates an uncharted facet of Martin Luther’s Hebrew translation method. It is one of the more fascinating aspects of his translation, which demonstrates both the complexity of how he translated Hebrew and the lasting impact of the Hebrew on his German, neither of which has been fully appreciated by scholars. This article demonstrates how he sometimes blended Hebrew and German idioms in his translation of the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the Minor Prophets. It further shows how he used this translation method to convey various linguistic features of the Hebrew language to his German audience. Finally, it shows how this has a number of important implications for Luther studies, Hebrew and German linguistics, and medieval and early modern history.

Arabic Grammar Curricula for Primary Schools in Middle Eastern Countries

This article analyzes the contents of Arabic grammar curricula authorized for the upper years of primary school by the ministries of education of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. The article aims to determine the attitudes and rationales behind these curricula, as well as their objectives, the grammatical materials they cover, the amount of time they allocate to the study of grammar, and their educational and pedagogical approach. Drawing on the results of a comparative analysis, the authors propose developmental alternatives to the current curricula. Arabic language instruction in Hebrew language schools in Israel is not addressed. The results of the study suggest that the examined curricula fail to achieve the functional standards for grammar instruction they set for themselves and to integrate the various domains of linguistic study, and that they suffer from other weaknesses that must be addressed.

Between Abgrund and Urwirbel: The Story of One Word in the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible Translation

AbstractThis paper closely examines the translation of the Hebrew word תהום – abyss (Genesis 1:2), in two versions of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible: In the first edition of Die Schrift published 1926 the abyss is translated as “Abgrund”. However, after Rosenzweig’s death, the “Abgrund” is erased by Buber and replaced in later versions (1930/1952/1962) by the rather odd word “Urwirbel.” This paper reflects on the transition from “Abgrund” to “Urwirbel” and demonstrates the profound rootedness of Buber and Rosenzweig in the German philosophical vocabulary of the early twentieth century. It shows how the conversion from “Abgrund” to “Urwirbel” crystalized a moment in German-Jewish thought, a historical meeting point in the depths of the abyss between the German and the Hebrew languages. The encounter was covered by the course of history but deserves to be revisited and reinterpreted.