Hebrew Learning Research Articles

A Fraying Connection: Israeli-American Perspectives on Diasporic Hebrew Learning Through and Beyond Jewish Education

ABSTRACT In this hybrid ethnographic case study, I explore how a cadre of Israeli-American parents in Los Angeles navigate the local Hebrew education landscape to seek linguistic resources for their children. I examine how participants envision Hebrew learning and determine the roles of Jewish, Israeli-serving, and public schools in transmitting Hebrew language, Judaism, and Israeli identity. Participants’ perspectives on the vitality and utility of American Jewish institutions mediate their interest in various Hebrew learning offerings, surfacing cues that signal an institution’s trustworthiness. This paper expands discourse on Hebrew education by foregrounding Israeli-heritage individuals’ concerns regarding diasporic Hebrew learning.

Scott N. Callaham. Biblical Aramaic for Biblical Interpreters: A Parallel Hebrew-Aramaic Handbook

Scott N. Callaham. <i>Biblical Aramaic for Biblical Interpreters: A Parallel Hebrew-Aramaic Handbook</i>

Gerson Cohen'in Yahudiliğe Bakış Açısı ve Muhafazakâr Yahudiliğe Katkıları Üzerine Kısa Bir Değerlendirme

Cohen was born in New York to a Hebrew-speaking, moderately Jewish Orthodox and Zionist family of Russian origin. Cohen completed his undergraduate education in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in 1943, which is the main center of Conservative Judaism, and simultaneously, in New York City College in 1944. Cohen also received his master's degree in JTSA and his rabbinic diploma in 1948. Cohen completed his doctorate at the University of Columbia in 1958.Having studied Hebrew at a young age, Cohen has an important place in Conservative Judaism that is a branch of American Judaism. Cohen, who first started working as a librarian in JTSA (1950), started teaching Jewish History and Literature in the following years, and later continued as a professor. Cohen, who was the chancellor of JTSA between 1972-1986, is one of the best-known chancellors as he was the first chancellor to ordain a woman rabbi in Conservative Judaism. During his term, Cohen tried to make JTSA as a center of higher Jewish education for all Jews in the United States, especially for Jewish teachers, administrators and rabbis, and gave great importance to Torah studies, Zionism, Halakha and Hebrew learning and placed them in the center of Conservative Judaism.With a historicist approach, Cohen saw today's Judaism as a continuation of historical Judaism. In his eyes, all Jewish religious education institutions in America, such as the JTS, were no different from the Yavneh academy in terms of their functions. He also regarded diversity as natural and was not afraid to use the term "Conservative Judaism" as a detached group. Cohen was telling his colleagues at the JTS that the Conservative movement should take pride in its achievements and thinking that the institutionalization of Jews in the American diaspora was vital for future generations.Cohen's most striking idea was that he saw assimilation as a positive element for Jews. According to Cohen, it was justifiable that assimilation has a positive value when evaluated within the historical context of Judaism. For him, assimilation and cultural change should be seen as renewal, because these two factors stimulate the revival of Jewish thought life and contribute to the continuity of tradition. Although Cohen's idea was viewed by some as a creative idea, but mostly was criticized by Jewish circles. According to criticisms, Jews have suffered greatly in history due to assimilation, causing Jews not to survive for centuries. Especially in the Hellenistic and Greek periods, they lost their names, their language and even abandoned the sacred language of worship, which is Hebrew.Cohen's expression of the ''Jewish Group'', additionally describing the Jews as a minority with the phrase; ''Jews have always been a minority and will no doubt remain a minority'' has alienated and isolated the Jews. While Cohen advocates dialogue between Jews in the diaspora (including other religions and other Jewish sects) with the external environment, on the other hand, seeing them as a "minority" and isolating them constitutes a great contradiction. Cohen also regards the support of Zionism and the State of Israel as a duty of every Jew in order to have "a healthy Israel". His Zionist family and environment, in which he grew up in his childhood, had a great influence on this idea. Indeed, Cohen's participation in the establishment of the Zionist organization, Merkaz, in Israel and the opening of JTS's branches and some schools in Israel, support his Zionist view. But this approach can be seen as a factor that weakens diaspora Judaism and can prevent it from acting independently.

The Expansion of Dual Language Bilingual Education into New Communities and Languages: The Case of Hebrew in a New York City Public Middle School

This article describes a case study of dual language bilingual education (DLBE) that challenges the model’s traditional mold while offering important insights into its utility for communities of less commonly taught languages. We begin with an outline of the expansion of DLBE in New York City, part of a broader national trend. We then explore a new Hebrew-English DLBE program at a traditional New York City public middle school, documenting the program’s establishment and evolution over its first few years. Following this, we examine the school’s replacement of DLBE with a “heritage language program” model and show how both options are mismatched to the community’s actual needs or interests and ultimately restrict the possibilities for Hebrew learning. Specifically, we contribute to growing critiques of rigidity in program models, showing how at times adherence to the model is prioritized over the actual needs of students and their families—even when school leaders maintain they are implementing DLBE for the community. We argue that alternatives to DLBE with greater flexibility can serve crucial goals for local communities.

Discourse―yes, Grammar―no. Influence of Arabic mother tongue on Arab students' writing in Hebrew

Learning Hebrew among L1 Arabic speakers in East Jerusalem, Israel, has gained momentum, since being fluent in the language of the majority contributes to socioeconomic mobility and inclusion. One of the main challenges L2 learners face is writing, specifically expository and argumentative composition. Writing products of native speakers of Arabic (L1) in Hebrew (L2) reveal cross-linguistic influences, including language transfer from L1. This L1 interference is strengthened by the strong resemblance of these two Semitic languages, and is manifested in morphology, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and rhetorical structures. In this study we examine changes in the expository-argumentative writing in Hebrew (L2) of Arabic speaking students who participated in an intensive Hebrew learning program. We used qualitative textual analysis based on 52 writing products [26 pre-, 26 post-tests]. Our research questions were: 1. What are the main characteristics of Arabic speaking students' writing in Hebrew? 2. What types of changes are evident in their writing samples after completing two years of Hebrew study? In order to characterize their writing, study participants completed pre- and post-tests. Our findings suggest: (a) a strong interference of Arabic, on writing in Hebrew in different language fields: (b) a noticeable improvement in discourse, but much less in grammar, and in lexicon – mixed results.

What Can the Study of Hebrew Learning Contribute to Applied Linguistics?

What Can the Study of Hebrew Learning Contribute to Applied Linguistics?

Between two worlds: late Soviet Jews in Leningrad

ABSTRACTIn this article, Ann Komaromi reads late Soviet Jewish culture in Leningrad in terms of the “two worlds” Jewish activists negotiated: official and unofficial, Soviet/Russian and Jewish, present and past, etc. While the public rhetoric of the struggle for Soviet Jewry suggested dramatic binaries of death and salvation that resonate with the eschatological extremes of the “Petersburg text,” Komaromi argues for a more prosaic approach to the imaginative and cultural project of reconstructing Jewish identity by people in this context. The article features the recollections of former Jewish activists taken from interviews and memoirs to reveal the range of endeavors in which they engaged, including Hebrew learning and teaching, seminars, demonstrations, Jewish soccer teams, local history walking tours, unofficial book collections, and ethnographic expeditions.

György Thúri and his Hebrew translation of Paul's Epistles to the Galatians and the Ephesians: Hebrew among the classical languages in the sixteenth century

The paper examines the first Hebrew translation of the Epistles of Paul published in the Christian world: György Thúri's Hebrew translation of the Epistles to the Galatians and the Ephesians published in Wittenberg in 1598. The focus is on the sources used by the author in the production of his translation as well as on his major linguistic and stylistic choices. The paper seeks to place this translation in the context of Thúri's life and his literary productions as a Neo-Latin poet. This case study illustrates the place of Hebrew learning within the Humanist mentality of the sixteenth century.

INCORPORATING ANCIENT ISRAEL’S WORLDVIEW INTO THE TEACHING OF BIBLICAL HEBREW

Modern language instruction always includes a cultural component – students do not learn just isolated words, morphology and syntax, but rather the cultural context of the language and its speakers. The teaching of Biblical Hebrew, however, has usually taken place in a cultural vacuum without reference to the cultural concepts that permeated ancient Israelite society. In this paper we describe an initiative to embed the teaching of Biblical Hebrew within the cultural world-view of ancient Israel in accordance with modern language pedagogy. Because South Africa is a multi-cultural society, we pay particular attention to the differing cultural backgrounds that our students bring to the learning of ancient Hebrew.

Code-Switching Functions in Modern Hebrew Teaching and Learning

ABSTRACTThe teaching and learning of Modern Hebrew outside of Israel is essential to Jewish education and identity. One of the most contested issues in Modern Hebrew pedagogy is the use of code-switching between Modern Hebrew and learners’ first language. Moreover, this is one of the longest running disputes in the broader field of second language research and education. Based on recent conceptualizations of bi/multilingualism together with findings from an empirical investigation of beginner students at an Australian university, this article argues that strategic use of code-switching serves the needs of both learners and teachers working within a bi/multilingual educational environment.

Hebrew learning ideologies and the reconceptualization of American Judaism: Language debates in American Jewish schooling in the early 20th century

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which Hebrew education was construed in the United States by tracing the Hebrew ideology debate of the early and mid-1900s, when dramatic changes were made to modernize Jewish schooling and its place within American society. Focusing on the Hebrew learning ideologies and educational philosophies of Samson Benderly and his followers, it examines how the

Negotiating language ownership: Hebrew charter schools and the American Jewish press

Since 2007, Hebrew language charter schools – publicly-financed K-8 schools teaching Modern Hebrew to religiously, linguistically, and culturally diverse students – have emerged in cities across the United States. This article analyzes the contested notion of language ownership by exploring a set of discussions in over 75 articles in the American Jewish press about Hebrew charters. This article demonstrates how anxieties about communal production and reproduction are traceable through the circulated discourses about Hebrew learning. Analysis reveals how Hebrew charters are perceived as both a threating practice and an opportunity for communal renewal and growth. Hebrew charters illuminate how language ownership is negotiated through printed media and how one community grapples with the challenges and possibilities that language diffusion presents.

Crossing boundaries: journeys into language

This paper uses two autobiographical accounts of language learning within the context of highly significant personal relationships to argue that the functional emphasis of communicative language teaching has narrowed our understanding of the potential personal and educational meaning of what it is to learn a language. The author's learning of Hebrew and German at different periods of his life is interpreted within his close relationship (as a person raised within the conventionally anti-Semitic cultural environment of Australian Irish Catholicism) with European Jewish friends whose lives have been shaped by the Holocaust and its painful legacy. Language learning in each case has involved psychological and social exploration of the meaning of cultural boundaries and how they are policed. The narrative supports a traditional rationale for the educational benefit of language learning, one that is currently little heard: the development of the learner as a human being.

"I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (review)

Reviewed by: "I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship Dean Phillip Bell "I have always loved the Holy Tongue": Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship, by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, with Alastair Hamilton. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 392 pp. $35.00. In this original, highly learned, and beautifully produced volume Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, known for their important contributions to Renaissance scholarship and intellectual history, have teamed up to provide an innovative and provocative study of an intriguing, if often neglected, Renaissance Hebraist, Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614). The methodology they utilize, namely careful attention to Casaubon's marginal comments on books that he read (he annotated hundreds of books and wrote sixty volumes of notes), is powerful and, combined with a close and nuanced reading of his published works and a broad context, makes this a remarkable book that will have implications far beyond its immediate field. Better known for his philological prowess and his studies of ancient Greek and Latin literature, Casaubon was also an avid reader, student, and collector of Judaica. He read works in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and even Yiddish. The analysis in the volume proceeds on a number of levels simultaneously, as the authors assess the traditional presentation of Casaubon, place him in an historical context, and scrutinize the full range of his writings. The resulting image of Casaubon that Grafton and Weinberg re-create is of an individual in formation. They point to his accomplishments and successes and well as his failures and searching. They craft a multi-dimensional human being and explore how he thought and responded to what he read and discussed. Describing the process of his note taking, Grafton and Weinberg provide useful insights into Casaubon's thought process and methods of contextual and meaning-making reading. They point to the intricate web that connects Casaubon's thought in his published work as well as his draft publications, notes, letters (including approximately 2,500, mostly in Latin) and journal entries. Grafton and Weinberg trace his methods of reading and then move to a detailed discussion of Casaubon's study of Hebrew, a particularly useful exercise given that Casaubon taught Hebrew only briefly and was not a specialist in that field. For Casaubon, much of his interest in Hebrew writing and Jewish thought was related to his own, internal Christian polemics—especially his criticism of Hermes Trismegistus and his attack on Pietro Galatino. Much of Casaubon's impressive Hebrew learning was enlisted in a fierce battle with Cardinal Cesare Baronio. Casaubon's critique made much of what Casaubon saw as Baronio's ignorance of Hebrew and Greek and his lack of critical acumen, [End Page 178] as well as his shortcomings when it came to chronology and his lack of understanding of Hebrew and Jewish customs. For Casaubon, the study of late Antiquity and the early years of Christianity had important resonance for his day and required contextualization within the Jewish world of Jesus as well as his disciples and opponents. Grafton and Weinberg offer a nuanced account of Casaubon's engagement with Baronio, providing important discussion that measures the intellectual and religious climate and agenda of the time and that spills over into more personal issues of religion and attempts to convert Casaubon to Catholicism. In this context, Grafton and Weinberg provide particularly intriguing and useful discussion of Casaubon's interaction with Joseph Scaliger. Although they never met in person, the two scholars exchanged letters and engaged in discussion of key academic themes, with many of Scaliger's sensibilities serving as fodder for Casaubon's own approach and conclusions. Like others of his time, Casaubon appears to have been engaged in a "spiritual quest, which knew no denominational boundaries" (p. 43). While the authors generally find Casaubon to be a "dispassionate" reader, even when annotating Jewish prayerbooks, they note the appearance of hidden agendas on occasion. Despite the use he made of Hebrew texts and his great engagement with them, Casaubon like other Christian Hebraists does not appear to have been "sympathetic" to the Jews or the rabbis...

Hebrew Learning and Identity Perception among Russian Speakers in Israel

Hebrew Learning and Identity Perception among Russian Speakers in Israel

Validation through Hebrew Literature

This paper deals with the selection of teaching material at school-leaving and tertiary levels in Hebrew learning institutes outside of the state of Israel. It proposes that, in addition to the core teaching material that is Israeli literature, one should include a sample of local works, as these are of great benefit in validating the students\' lives as well as the viability of Hebrew language and literature. Such material, written in Hebrew, yet portraying familiar existence, interlinks various aspects of students\' identity – such as their religious or ideological affiliation, together with their domestic life experience – with the Hebrew language. Furthermore, the paper suggests that personal validation through this particular study material may attract students to researching this field and lure them to produce similar works if they have the literary inclination.Journal for Language Teaching vol Vol. 41 (2) 2007: pp. 112-123

Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden (review)

Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden, by Jason P. Rosenblact. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 314 pp. $99.00. The impact of Greek and Latin upon English Renaissance culture continues to be examined intensely, but apart from studies of King James Bible and Milton, little concerted attention has been devoted to contribution of Hebrew studies to that culture. Hence exceptional importance of Jason Rosenblatts new study: Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Seiden, a work deploring and correcting that neglect. Rosenblatt s volume swirls around Seiden, but is more broadly dedicated to the cultural influence of and especially talmudic on some early modern British poets and intellectuals as mediated principally by (p. 3). The sweep of volume is large. Rosenblatt opens with divorce proceedings of Henry VIII. Lacking adequate authorities in England, Henry sent inquiries to Jewish scholars abroad concerning incest laws and critical biblical texts concerning levirate marriage. This discussion illuminates impoverished state of Hebrew studies at outset of English Renaissance and curious responses of rabbis themselves, and likewise shows how an understanding of that theological controversy leads to a richer understanding of Hamlet. From that point, Rosenblatt focuses upon Seiden's intense exploration of and Talmudic material and impact of his studies upon a wide spectrum of English figures, ranging from Ben Jonson to Sir John Vaughan Among English intellectuals of his rime, only placed rabbinic thought at centre of his scholarship (p. 105). The focus of Rosenblatt's study is thus two-fold: (1) character and direction of Selden's explorations of wisdom; and (2) his transmission of that learning to his friends and to his culture at large. Rosenblatt documents that Selden's fascination with materials was already well advanced by time of writing of De Diis Syris (1617) (p. 2), and continued to explore these materials until end of his life, producing six substantial works resting upon that scholarship. By time of his death in 1654, Rosenblatt affirms, Seiden would have been most learned scholar in country, an accomplishment leading one Christian Hebraist in 1641 to address him as Rabbi (p. 4). Selden's reputation, moreover, as most learned man in England led students of every stripe to pore over his volumes, to such an extent that he in essence became a primary text himself, study of generally substituting for study of actual works. Once Selden's influence weakened, tellingly, so did quality of Hebrew learning itself in England. As important as study of Hebrew texts themselves, however, was Selden's orientation. Rosenblatt shows that Selden's works constitute a notable exception to those products of English Renaissance that emphasize otherness and difference (p. 161). In midst of an age of prejudice, he insists, Seiden transmitted an uncommonly generous view of Judaism (p. 9). So influential were Selden's views, in fact, that Rosenblatt argues that his promulgation of ideas drawn from ancient writers as well as post-Talmudic rabbis created conditions leading to reintroduction of Jews into England in 1650s (pp. 277-8). Such is larger portrait of Seiden. The chapters themselves have a divided emphasis. The first half of volume brings learning (largely mediated by Seiden) to bear on literary matters. Selden's learned correspondence with Ben Jonson over issue of cross-dressing is particularly interesting, as are Rosenblatt's two chapters detailing Selden's influence upon Milton's creations. …

Nation and Ethnic Identity Self-Definitions in a Canadian Language Class

An ethnographic study of a Canadian, undergraduate, advanced Hebrew course composed of heritage language learners of diverse backgrounds examined the fluctuating notion of nation and shifting national membership affiliations. Data collection techniques included participant observation and in-depth, semistructured, focus group and individual interviews of 10 students. The professor found varied constructions of national identity mediated by the influence of the learning and usage of modern Hebrew. Although all students and the professor were Jewish and identified as such, two predominant categories (“Canadians” and “Israelis”) were formed and imposed and divided the classroom when students gathered as a group. However, on further examination in individual interviews, contradictory self- and other identifications emerged based on individuals' relations to Hebrew.

Carmen Caballero-Navas (ed.), The book of women's love and Jewish medieval medical literature on women: Sefer Ahavat Nashim, The Kegan Paul Library of Jewish Studies, London and New York, Kegan Paul, 2004, pp. 314, £85.00 (hardback 0-7103-0758-6).

The Hebrew Book of women's love (Sefer Ahavat Nashim), here edited and translated for the first time, is known to exist in only one late fifteenth-century copy, made probably in the area of Catalonia or Provence. Caballero-Navas postulates that the text was composed in the thirteenth century, but a more precise dating may never be possible. It gathers together different kinds of knowledge, juxtaposing magic with detailed remedies based on the traditional pharmacopoeia of simple and compound medicines widely used in medieval Europe. After introductory sections on love magic and aphrodisiacs, it organizes the remaining cosmetic, gynaecological, and obstetrical remedies in head-to-toe order. The combination of medicine and cosmetics, topics we would now consider quite distinct, is not at all unusual in the Middle Ages, being found in Latin and vernacular texts on women's medicine throughout Europe. More unusual is the incorporation of mechanisms to improve the sexual success of men, which are rarely found so closely allied to women's medicine in other linguistic traditions until the late Middle Ages. The Book is first and foremost a remedy book, with virtually no theory of causation. As such, it is probably of most interest as evidence for the sociology of the body and will rightly attract a broad audience of historians of women's medicine and sexuality. Such readers will no doubt find this edition and its accompanying commentary a bit obscure not simply because of the unusual nature of the text but also because of certain editorial decisions. Instead of merely stating that the works of the Arabic authorities al-Ra¯zī, Ibn Sīna¯, and al-Zahra¯wī, all of whom are cited in the text, were translated into Hebrew at such and such a date, Caballero-Navas might have confirmed whether the references can be traced or if the author was simply name-dropping. Greater engagement with Latin medical traditions might have also shown that this Hebrew tradition is not as directly derivative of Arabic medicine as it seems. Caballero assumes (pp. 28–9) direct use of the North African Arabic writer Ibn al-Jazza¯r, ignoring the more obvious parallels with the Latin Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum, a twelfth-century Salernitan treatise that drew heavily upon Ibn al-Jazza¯r and was available in Hebrew translation. And most readers are likely to miss the passing clarification on p. 81 that the Catalan cosmetic and gynaecological treatise, which has already been referred to over a dozen times as the Trotula, has no direct relation to the Latin treatise that circulated under that name; they will find no explanation at all that this is actually a rendering of a Latin treatise on cosmetics usually attributed to Arnau of Vilanova. Caballero-Navas is least persuasive in her arguments about the book's intended audience. As the original author himself declares, this book is about “what women like and need for themselves; for this reason it has been called Book of women's love, for you will find in this book what women, and those who are able to have intercourse with them, ask from the art of medicine” (p. 116). Caballero-Navas fails to engage with the significance of that penultimate phrase and with items such as “A love formula … that is so strong that she will run after you” or a concoction which the reader is to make from his own semen (p. 108). Male use of cosmetic and gynaecological texts, whether to treat female patients, to inform themselves about sexuality and generation, or to woo women through knowledge of cosmetics, has now been well documented for other medieval gynaecological and cosmetic literature. The one extant manuscript copy of the Book situates it alongside works of Kabbalah, medicine, and natural philosophy; despite Caballero-Navas's citation of evidence for Jewish women's book ownership, the character of this codex suggests interests more typical of learned males. The present study does not supersede Barkai's 1998 survey of a larger body of Hebrew gynaecological literature, which addressed important questions of the motives for translation and the relation of Jewish learning to that of the majority Christian culture (Ron Barkai, A history of Jewish gynaecological texts in the Middle Ages, Leiden, 1998). Nevertheless, this handsomely produced edition contributes significantly to the recovery of medieval Hebrew learning and, one hopes, will serve as the basis for future analyses of how knowledge of sexuality and medicine was shared or contested between men and women, and who was actually reading books such as this.

Judaism, Mathematics, and the Hebrew Calendar (review)

Reviewed by: Judaism, Mathematics, and the Hebrew Calendar Solomon Gartenhaus Judaism, Mathematics, and the Hebrew Calendar, by Hyman Gabai. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2002. 419 pp. $50.00. This book is divided into three parts: (1) “Judaism and Mathematics”; (2) “Mathematics and the Hebrew Calendar”; and (3) “Miscellaneous Notes and Proofs and Solutions and Exercises.” In length, these three parts are divided roughly in the ratio 1:2:1. Since the second and third parts deal in large measure with the technical aspects of the Hebrew calendar, this review will consider mainly the first part on Judaism and mathematics. It should be noted that although the author uses the word “mathematics” throughout, and indeed makes brief—sometimes tangential—references to mathematical giants, Euclid, Cantor, Einstein, Goedel, etc., nothing more than ordinary arithmetic and, possibly, a little elementary algebra in the second section is required to understand the material. Leaving this aside, the reviewer found the first part on Judaism and mathematics delightful reading and surprisingly interesting. The author has gathered together numerous examples of how numbers, specifically the positive integers, play an important role in—and are intertwined with—many Jewish traditions. Perhaps most readers will recall the Hebrew word “chai” (life) and its associated gematrical (to be explained below) equivalent, the number 18. When giving a gift to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, it is considered very appropriate to write a check in the amount of $18, $36 or some higher multiple of chai. Similarly, the dues of some Jewish organizations are also based on multiples of chai. Gabai notes that Jerusalem was reunited in 3240 (=180 chai) after the death of Miriam and Aaron; that the state of Israel was founded 3600 years (=200 chai) after the birth of the patriarch Israel. The author argues that these are not exceptions and that there are numerous such numerical references throughout Hebrew learning and tradition. To mention but two examples of the many offered in the book: (1) the closing of the Seder festival is usually marked by those present singing in unison the song “Who Knows One; 1 God, 2 tablets of the commandments, 3 patriarchs, 4 matriarchs, 5 books of the Torah . . .”; (2) the appearance of the number 10 is also very striking: there are 10 commandments, 10 plagues, 10 males required for a minyan, 10 generations from Adam to Noah, 10 curtains of the holy tabernacle, 10 days of repentance, etc. These are by no means the only examples of the appearance of integers in Jewish traditions. As a final striking example, Abraham was born in the year 1948 of the Jewish calendar and the state of Israel was founded in the year 1948 of the Gregorian calendar! Even the skeptic begins to wonder if these are coincidences after all. The final chapter of this first part deals with “Gematria.” According to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary Gematria is: 1. a cryptograph in the form of a word whose letters have the numerical values of a word taken as the hidden meaning; 2. the cabalistic method of explaining Hebrew scriptures by means of the cryptographic meaning of the word. [End Page 138] The specific association of numbers to Hebrew letters is as follows. The first ten letters (aleph, beth, . . . yud) are associated with 1, 2, . . ., 10; the next nine letters (kav, lamed, . . ., tzadik) are associated with the integers 20, 30, . . ., 100, and the last three letters (resh, shin, tav) are 200, 300, and 400 respectively. Thus the word “chai,” which is written cheth (8) and yud (10), has, as noted above, the gematria value 18. Also in use is a reverse gematria in which the last letter tav is 1 and the first, aleph, is 400. (There apparently is also a permutation gematria where presumably anything goes!) Very striking is the equivalence of the word “tefila” (prayer) with “Baruch HaShem” (“blessed is the name”) both of which have the gematria and the reverse gematria of 515. The reader can judge for himself where this leads, and Gabai, who gives numerous worked-out examples, cautions the reader to “avoid the type of analysis that may lead to conclusions that are antithetical to the principle and spirit of Judaism.” The reviewer...