Can't make a streimel out of a pig's tail

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Y is for Yiddish wit, for example:

You can't make a shtreimel out of a pig's tail.

• Fun a khazer-shventsl ken men keyn shtrayml nit makhn.

• English equivalent: You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
• Meaning: You cannot produce anything of good quality from poor raw material; often used of people.

In case you've never seen a shtreimel, it's that fur hat on the right.
Worn by certain ultra-orthodox Jewish men on holidays and Shabbat.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
UPDATE: Please see added interesting information in the comments.
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Red and green, but not a poinsettia

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I was out hiking the desert on December 25 when these red and green Christmas colors sparked my interest.
A lone eucalyptus tree, in an eye-catching stage!

You can enlarge this photo a lot and enjoy the pretty opercula.
I'm just learning this botany vocabulary and what fun to discover that eucalypt comes from the  Greek for "well covered," just like we can see in the photo!

Wikipedia explains

Eucalyptus is one of three similar genera that are commonly referred to as "eucalypts" . . . Many species, but far from all, are known as gum trees because they exude copious kino from any break in the bark (e.g. scribbly gum).
The generic name is derived from the Greek words ευ (eu) "well" and καλύπτω (kalýpto) "to cover," referring to the operculum on the calyx that initially conceals the flower.

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Learn while you wait

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Something new on the newest Metropoline buses that depart from Beer Sheva Central Bus Station!
A good way to use your mind while standing in line for a ticket?
"Have a nice day."

Nice expressions in Hebrew, English, Russian, and Arabic, the languages most heard in Beer Sheva.
"Have a pleasant ride." 

But look closely!
The original words are transliterated into Hebrew letters and are written phonetically.
It looks quite funny.

Toda! on top is the Hebrew word for thank you.
Then is says, on the right:
thenk yu
spasiba
shukran
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(Linking to Signs, signs  and to Toby's meme, Whimsical windows, delirious doors.)
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A feather in his cap

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The very idea of having an Invocation for Peace is a feather in the Pope's cap.
It was very moving to watch the interaction of such different leaders of various faiths  live tonight.

Let's see what happens next.
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No room in the inn

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Photo of Pundak Ein Kerem from its own webpage

I'm getting the feeling that my humor in the previous post took a wrong turn.
I didn't mean to diss the restaurant that much.
Probably only a photo blogger's eye would even pay attention to the sign on the dusty car, because the Ein Kerem Inn is always full of people.

You can read a glowing review of the place here  and see a video on YouTube .
Next time I'm in the village of Ein Kerem I should go in and take a first-hand look.

Helen in Australia asked what an inn is in the Israeli context.
I think pundak, meaning inn, is nowadays just a cute name for an eatery.

In olden days it meant a caravanserai, a place on the trade routes where caravans could overnight in safety.    Also called khan.
I discovered that the pundak that we now use in Hebrew is like the  فندق funduq in Arabic (from the Greek, pandocheion, an inn).
Arabic has no p sound, so the Greek p here came into the Arabic as funduk, which went back into Hebrew as pundak.
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Quill and Qulmus

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For ABC Wednesday I found not one but two words beginnings with Q:
quill and the Hebrew word qulmus, which means quill.

This nice little video at the Israel Museum showed how a sofer stam , a scribe for holy writing, cuts a turkey or goose feather in a special way, turning it into a quill.
He then dips the qulmus in specially prepared black ink and "hangs" the Hebrew letters from the sirtut lines he has etched into the parchment. (Look closely and see his guide-lines in the photo.)

See more about this process at Wiki and Torah Tots.

Even more ancient than the feather quill is the reed quill.
Our Talmudic sages taught that to write a Torah scroll one must not use a quill from a cedar tree that stands tall and arrogant, rather a quill from a reed, which is soft, flexible, and humble.

The Hebrew word qulmus (also transliterated kulmus) come from the ancient Greek kalamos (and Latin calamus), meaning reed or reed pen.

The basis for this meaning is the story of the Greek mythological figure Kalamos, son of Maiandros (god of the Maeander river).
Two youths, Kalamos and Karpos, were competing in a swimming contest in this river when Karpos drowned.
In his grief, Kalamos allowed himself to drown also.
He was then transformed into a water reed whose rustling in the wind was interpreted as a sigh of lamentation.
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On a happier note, have fun listening to Hora Ha-Kulmus, Dance of the Quill, for reed instruments!
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UPDATE  See Bibi Netanyahu pen a word of Torah in the scroll-writing project in the synagogue atop Masada! 

Read this: International Literacy Day today

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A child-high table for playing with the 22 Hebrew letters at the Jewish museum at Hechal Shlomo in Jerusalem.

Today is International Literacy Day.

The International Reading Association says that

International Literacy Day, traditionally observed annually on September 8, focuses attention on worldwide literacy needs. More than 780 million of the world’s adults (nearly two-thirds of whom are women) do not know how to read or write, and between 94 and 115 million children lack access to education.

And Wikipedia has the list of countries, starting at 100% literacy and going down to 26%(!).

Imagine . . .
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The first Babel fish?

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Step through this door and you will find doors to many little translation booths.
Or so I trust.
Alas, I lost my nerve after seeing the sign
TRANSLATION BOOTHS -- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
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Well, I AM (or was) a certified translator, but I was certainly not authorized to be roaming in the big empty convention hall building of The Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center.
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The new modern building is on Vatican property near the 19th century Notre Dame pilgrim hostel (see here and here).
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These doors made me think about the Catholic center's need for simultaneous interpreting these days as compared to the Disciples' sudden ability to speak in many languages, a miraculous gift given in Jerusalem's Upper Room on the first Pentecost almost two thousand years ago.
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Today is Pentecost Monday, the Feast of the Holy Spirit.
The dramatic story of the "speaking in tongues" is in Acts 2.
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Some see this as a reversal of the curse of the Tower of Babel, when God confounded the languages.
Acts 2 describes the phenomenon as a miracle of universal translation, enabling people from many parts of the world speaking many different languages to understand the Christian message.
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From the Orthodox Christian liturgy for the day:

Kontakion

When the most High came down and confused the tongues,
He divided the nations;
But when he distributed the tongues of fire
He called all to unity.
Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-holy Spirit!

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This post, my last about Pentecost until next year (no, really!), enters into Monday Doorways and That's MyWorld Tuesday.
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Happy scenes from the International Book Fair

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This week's Jerusalem International Book Fair had 100,000 books, with 30 countries exhibiting, and 100,000 visitors were expected during the five days.
As I promised you yesterday, here are some more curiosities from the fair.

Sefer Hazahav! The huge Golden Books list the years and names of donors to the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet leYisrael).
This is more fully explained in my post from the last (2009) fair, along with a glimpse inside the venerable book.

"All roads lead to Italy," I think that's what it says.
And with TWO boots instead of the traditional one boot of Italy's map, I suppose walking those roads is easier.

Germany always has a mega-exhibit of quality books.
But cardboard boxes?! Several stacks of them formed philosophical building blocks.
If you know German, enlarge the photo and enjoy the quotations.

So sweet. The French offered a kid-sized reading corner for little readers.

CDs of Israeli songs, but sung in Esperanto!

Zamenhof, a Jew living in the Russian Empire, published his book about the international language he invented in 1887 under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto" (Doctor Hopeful), from which the name of the language derives.
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Jerusalem's Gypsies

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The most interesting new thing I learned at the June 28 rededication of Herod's Gate was this:

The man delivering a speech in this photo is gypsy mukhtar of the Old City, Abed-Alhakim Mohammed Deeb Salim, whose community resides in the Muslim Quarter’s Bab al-Hutta section near Herod’s Gate.

Who knew?? Not me!
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Apparently somewhere between 600 and 1000 gypsies live inside the walls of the Old City.
Larger populations live in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the West Bank.
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Some think that the Domari (the name for Middle Eastern gypsies) migrated from India over a thousand years ago, while some say from the Arabian Peninsula.
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Here they have assimilated to the extent that they are now Arabic-speaking Muslims.
Only the elderly still remember the Domari language.


This present mukhtar (being interviewed above) is the grandson of the mukhtar who led the community in the early 20th century when they were still nomadic, traveling between Jerusalem and towns in the West Bank, holding occupations such as blacksmiths, silversmiths, horse dealers and trainers, singers and street musicians, dancers, and animal healers, belt makers and tattoo artists.
But also, it is said, some excelled as pickpockets and beggars.
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The Dom then settled in a tent encampment in Jerusalem, just north of Damascus Gate.
In the early 1940s the British military administration suspected them of hiding weapons used in the Palestinian resistance against British rule, and their encampment was dissolved.
The gypsies began to find rented accommodations within the Old City, turned to paid occupations, and became sedentary.
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Many of the women and children were beggars until 1967. Those who did not flee during the Six Day War soon began receiving some Israeli social benefits when the Old City came under our administration.
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However, there is still poverty. Apparently because they are poor and are "different," the Dom kids feel discrimination and humiliation (e.g. called to the front of the classroom to be called "nawar," or dirty Gypsy, in front of all the students) in the Arab schools and many drop out. The illiteracy rate within the community is almost 40%!
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The Domari Society of Gypsies in Jerusalem was founded in 1999 and strives to help the community and to keep their handicrafts, customs, food, and language alive.
They have a wonderful website. Please pay them a visit.
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Haaretz has a good article about the community called "Linguistic embers of a colorful past."
And an American student who spent several months with the Domari Society blogs about them here and here.
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UPDATE Oct. 27, 2013:  A good new Ynet article about the Jerusalem Gypsies today.
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A voice from heaven at the Jordan--in Pidgin English

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Let's see more of Yardenit, the baptism site that we talked about in Saturday's post.

Click on the picture to witness Christians baptizing in the River Jordan.
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But what are all those ceramic plaques on the wall?

More of them at the main entrance to Yardenit.
Can you read any of the three biblical languages here?
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And the basalt pipe links were part of a 4th century aqueduct that carried water from the Yavniel springs down to Tiberias.
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All the many plaques are quoting Mark 1:9-11, in many different languages.
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The ceramic wall was designed and created by artist Hagop Antreassian from Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter.

My favorite has to be the one in Hawai'i Pidgin! It's so full of life and excitement!
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There is even a website about Da Hawa'i Pidgin Bible.
Maybe our blogger friends in Hawai'i, Kay and Cloudia and the others, can tell us more.
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International Mother Language Day

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We interrupt our walk through the Supreme Court Building in order to celebrate International Mother Language Day!

Click on the plaque to read about the "Father of modern Hebrew."

This house in Jerusalem, on Ethiopia Street, is where the Ben-Yehuda family lived.

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Eliezer and Deborah left Europe and came to Palestine in 1881. Their first son, Ben-Zion, was born in 1882.

Ben-Yehuda was passionate about reviving the Hebrew language, and he made his wife promise
to raise the boy as the first all-Hebrew speaking child in modern history.
It was hard but it worked.

Legend has it that the little boy with Hebrew mother tongue carved the graffiti in the stone of his house. Shovav--mischievous boy!

Can you make out a crescent moon inside the rectangle, and what is supposed to be a star?

That was the Ottoman Turk flag back then, when the Land of Israel was a part of the Turkish empire.
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In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 came waves of mass immigration of Jews from 70 different countries, all speaking different languages.

Israel became known as the only country in which the parents learn the mother tongue from their children.
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X, O, and the K-word

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The challenge of letter X comes around again today at ABC Wednesday meme.

Tic-tac-toe is not the only fun way to use X and O.

Remember the era when we still wrote letters on stationery--and signed them with XOXO under our signature?
OK, it's easy to imagine hugging arms looking like the O. That is a recent North American addition to XOXO.
But how did X come to stand for "kiss"?
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Apparently this custom started in the early Christian era. To sign with "X" gave a document the validity of a sworn oath. The X was the first Greek letter of the Greek name Xristos (Jesus) and the X cross mark symbolized the cross.
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Many people were illiterate until even as recently as 150 years ago. So signing X took the place of a full signature. To show the importance of the mark, people would kiss it, just like they reverently put their lips to a Bible or crucifix.
This practice led to the idea of X representing a kiss.
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To Jews, however, X was an evil sign (as Leo Rosten recounts in The Joys of Yiddish) which represented the horrors of crucifixion [Jesus was not the only Jew crucified by the Romans, remember] as well as being the symbol of their Christian oppressors.
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So when waves of Jews, many of them illiterate or writing only non-Latin alphabets, entered Ellis Island in New York, they refused to sign the immigration forms with the customary X.
Instead they drew a circle.
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The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced ky-kel).
The American immigration inspectors started calling anyone who signed with an O a "kikel." Soon this was shortened to "kike."
Jewish-American merchants continued to sign with O instead of X for several decades, spreading the nickname kike wherever they went as a natural result.
At that time it was not a bad word. Only later did it develop into a racial slur.
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Apropos, you might also enjoy (?) my previous X-letter post; it's about xenophobia. :-)
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Qamats and qubbuts

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I am in a quandary whenever Q day comes around at ABC Wednesday. So today I have no qualms about not using Q words in English.
Instead I give you qamats and qubbuts. These are two of the vowels used in Hebrew.

See them on the chart?

In Tiberias I was delighted to find a new (2008) sculpture, by David Fine, near the Sea of Galilee.

The vowels, in black basalt, are shown in playful positions!

Actually, in modern Israeli Hebrew, we don't write the vowels very often. You will see a pointed/vocalized/voweled text only for some poetry or young children's books or a printed Bible or a newspaper in easy Hebrew for new immigrants.

Otherwise we just have the consonants and we have to "guess" how the words in context should be pronounced. If we left out the vowels in English, this blog would be from the Jrslm Hls.

As the sign says, "The Tiberias vocalization of Hebrew was based on the traditional Tiberias vowel system. After this system became the authoritative pronunciation for reading the Bible, all other methods were abolished."

That was the short explanation.

Here are parts of the long story, if you prefer, quoted from Wikipedia (here and here):

After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible . . . .

Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the remarkable scholarship of the Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. . . . The Aleppo Codex, a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century likely in Tiberias and survives to this day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence.
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The Masoretic Text (MT) is a Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation for both public reading and private study. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent years also for Catholic Bibles.
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Hebrew hapax legomenon

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Hebrew hapax legomena -- that is our topic in honor of H day at ABC Wednesday.

Hapax legomenon is Greek for "once said." It is a word that occurs only once in the written record of a language, in the works of an author, or in a single text.
It is a scholarly term much loved, used, and needed by Bible scholars.

In Hebrew literature a hapax is called either a milla bodedah, i.e. an "isolated word," or ʾen lo ah, ʾen lo ḥaver, ʾen lo reʿa ba-Miqraʾ, i.e. it has nothing alike, no brother, no fellow, no comrade in the Bible.
Depending on how broad your definition is, the Hebrew Bible has between 289 to 1,300 hapaxes.

My favorite is the Prophet Ezekiel's one-timer: hashmal (chashmal).

In Ezekiel 1:4 he tries to describe his mystical vision:

וָאֵרֶא וְהִנֵּה רוּחַ סְעָרָה בָּאָה מִן-הַצָּפוֹן, עָנָן גָּדוֹל וְאֵשׁ מִתְלַקַּחַת, וְנֹגַהּ לוֹ, סָבִיב; וּמִתּוֹכָהּ--כְּעֵין הַחַשְׁמַל, מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ.

Since no one knew what chashmal meant, the translations are very varied.

The RSV says "As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming bronze."
NIV: "like glowing metal"
21st Century King James Version: "as the color of amber"

More versions here.

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As you have guessed by now from the photos, modern Hebrew, when it needed to find a word for electricity, adopted Ezekiel's word chashmal!
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And my favorite sign (well, except for this one) is ELECTRICITY DANGER, a translation by the Franciscans of sakana chashmal, posted at the scene of Pope Benedict's Mass in Jerusalem.

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Safety dungeon, confession

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As a former translator I had to laugh at this rendering of the Hebrew term bor bitachon! Normally it is translated "safety pit." (You find them at every public place in Israel. It is a barrel buried in the ground, with a lid, in which to put a found suspicious object , e.g. a bomb, until the police sapper arrives. )
But Safety Dungeon???

This sign was there for the Pontifical Mass which was celebrated on Franciscan property in Jerusalem's Kidron Valley.
Click to enlarge and you can see their emblem, the crossed arms of Jesus and St. Francis.
So what did I find amusing? Well, in a moment of (Jewish) collective memory I imagined dungeons of the Inquisition; I wondered if the sign's translator-friar had unconsciously been influenced by the vocabulary of his inquisitor brothers from the Middle Ages, like, in a moment of (Catholic) collective memory.

Thank God, nothing and no one was put down in the dungeon during Mass on May 14.
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I do have a confession, however. I erred.
When reporting to you about Pope Benedict's Mass (here, here, here, and here) I assumed, since there were no statistics afterward in the media, that the place built specially for the event (to hold 6,000 people) was pretty much full.
A few days ago the newspapers suddenly announced that Church officials were "perplexed" about the low turnout for the Jerusalem Mass.
 It seems that only 3,000 (or 3,500 according to the Franciscan website) of us got through the gate.
Sorry about that. I must remember the old rule: Assume nothing.
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Onomatopoeia

O yes! O is the letter of the day. Welcome to ABC Wednesday,

where bloggers have fun playing with the alphabet. You can try too.

Oi veh, I thought, which of the many O words to choose?!
OK, let's take that big word I never know how to spell: ONOMATOPOEIA .

Onomatopoeia (from Greek ονοματοποιΐα) is a word or grouping of words that imitates the sound it describes (e.g. the animal noise meow) or suggests its source object (e.g. click, buzz, or bang). Greek όνομα, onoma, means name and ποιέω, poieō, means I make or I create, so it means name-creation.

Let's hear some Hebrew examples of onomatopoeia. My favorite is bakbuk. It means bottle. Doesn't it sound like liquid being poured from a bottle? bakbuk bakbuk bakbuk
BTW, this is also my favorite liqueur: chocolate! A tiny bit mixed with soda water or even milk, yum. Or on ice cream.

A tiftuf is water dripping, leaking. Or a light rain.
After years of drought Israel may soon run out of water. This tiftuf in the photo is at the Mekorot national water authority station in my village, of all places!

Tof is the onomatopoeiac Hebrew word for drum. Tof-Miriam is what we call a tambourine or timbrel.
This Miriam is one of the female Bible heroes portrayed in a dome in Jerusalem's Dormition Abbey.

Gur is a lion cub or a puppy. Grrr

 
Zvuv is a fly. Well, actually this is more a picture of a stinging insect. What he did was zimzem--he made a buzzing noise.

Has is the verb asking you to hush. Sha, sha means shhh, be still.

Rishroosh is the sound of waves lapping on the shore, like above at the Sea of Galilee.

The most well-known and well-loved use of the word is in the song by Hannah Senesh. (Can be heard on YouTube.)

ELI, ELI (Halicha L'kesariya)

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Eli, Eli

Shelo yigamer le'olam:

Hachol vehayam

Rishrush shel hamayim

Berak hashamayim

Tefilat ha-adam.

A STROLL IN CAESARIA

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Oh God!

Let it last forever,

the sand, the sea,

the lapping of the waves,

the glitter of the stars,

the prayer of men.

(translation by anonymous)
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"I" is for idioms

In blogland it is ABC Wednesday--take a look.

Here in Israel I invite you to idioms beginning with "I".

It takes a village to raise a child. = It takes many people to teach a child all that he or she should know.

In the swing. = If things are in the swing, they are progressing well.
I've got a bone to pick with you. = I have some complaint to make against you.
In someone else's shoes = It is difficult to know what another person's life is really like, so we don't know what it is like to be in someone's shoes.

In the saddle = If you're in the saddle, you are in control of a situation.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. = Wishing for something or wanting it is not the same as getting or having it.

In a jam = If you are in a jam, you are in some trouble.
In the driver's seat = In charge of something or in control of a situation.
I'll cross that road [or bridge] when I come to it. = I'll think about something just when it happens, not in advance.

Thanks to UsingEnglish.com for definitions of the idioms.