Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture How Are We Getting Epicurious?
Last week’s column ended with a question: Why, of all the philosophers of classical antiquity, was it Epicurus whose name, in the form of apikoros, became a rabbinic byword for a religious skeptic or heretic? To this we might add a second question. Epicurus also lent his name to many European languages: English, for example,…
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Culture I’ve Been Thinking ‘Bout the Railroad
Maurice Wolfthal writes from Houston: “I recently enjoyed Theodore Bikel’s rendition of the Yiddish song ‘Di Ban’ [‘The Train’] after not having heard it for more than 30 years. Part of the humor stems from his choice of dialect. Where most Yiddish speakers use the vowel ‘oy,’ he uses the ‘ey’ of English ‘grey,’ as…
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Culture Who Put the J (and -Ew) in Jew?
Philip Brogadir writes: “As a Jew (getting my bona fides in early), I’ve often had negative reactions to hearing or reading the word ‘Jew’ of the type you describe in your January 20 column. The reasons you give for this reaction are all well taken. However, you omit one that is, in my opinion, as…
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Culture Dishing Some Linguistic Dirt
Lewis Kupperman writes, “There is a Yiddish expression meaning to make mincemeat of someone or something that sounds like to make ‘ushenblottie,’” and he wants to know if I’m familiar with it. Mr. Kupperman’s “to make ushenblottie” is Yiddish makhn ash un blote — that is, “to make ashes and mud” of a person or…
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Culture X-Rated Dispute in Knesset
This week’s column, you should be warned, is X-rated. Don’t blame me for it. You can blame firebrand Anastasia Michaeli and gasoline-tongued Ahmad Tibi, both members of Israel’s Knesset. Soviet-born Michaeli — an ex-telecommunications engineer and fashion model who married an Israeli, immigrated to Israel in 1998 and converted to Judaism — belongs to Foreign…
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Culture Strange Case of Daleds
Reader Reuven Kalifon wonders why Ashkenazi tradition calls the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet “daled” even though its name is spelled ת-ל-ד (read right to left, daled-lamed-taf) and the final, dagesh-less taf is always pronounced as an ‘s’ in the Ashkenazi world. This is the same taf that we have in the letter bet,…
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Culture Persons of (Linguistic) Interest
Forward reader Bill Morris writes a letter about the pejorative associations that some non-Jews who are not at all anti-Semitic have with the word “Jew,” observing, “I have non-Jewish friends who still balk at saying ‘Jew’ — one friend always says ‘Jewish person.’” It’s not only non-Jews. I’ve also occasionally heard American Jews — almost…
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Culture New Words Coined To Exclude Women
Hadarat nashim, translatable as “the exclusion of women,” is a Hebrew phrase with which few Israelis would have been familiar several months ago. Now there are even fewer, if any, who are unfamiliar with it. After first coming to the public’s attention late last summer over the issue of excusing Orthodox soldiers in the Israeli…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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News One year after Oct. 7, a Yom Kippur ritual of communal mourning takes on fresh meaning
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