hebrew-language

"For reasons that remain obscure, in the case of the Palestinian Jews of Fustat, or Old Cairo—who worshipped in what would eventually become known as the Ben Ezra synagogue—the tradition of geniza was, it seems, extended to include the preservation of anything written in Hebrew letters, not only religious documents, and not just in the Hebrew language. Perhaps, as one scholar has proposed, "the very employment of the Hebrew script ... sanctified written material.""

"One way or another, the alphabet created a possibility that never existed before, namely of a society of mass, even universal, literacy. With only twenty-two symbols, it could be taught, in a relatively short time, to everyone. We see evidence of this at many places in Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah says "All your children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children" (Isaiah 54:13), implying universal education."

"1. All things proclaim an active, thinking cause. 2. The living unity heeds number's laws. 3. That which contains all is by nothing bound. 4. Before all else, He everywhere is found. 5. He, the sole Master—praise to Him alone! 6. To pure hearts His true doctrine He makes known. 7. Faith's works a single guide have, under heaven. 8. So one sole altar and one law are given. 9. What the Eternal founds, forever stays 67"

"The ancient Jews used Hebrew as their numerical system. May I? Each letter's a number. Like, the Hebrew A, Aleph [], is 1. B, Bet [], is 2. You understand?"

"Aleph and Tav being the first and the last letters of the alphabet, the expression "from Aleph to Tav" signifies "from beginning to end". Hence, "the observers of the Law from Aleph to Tav" are those that keep the Law in its entirety."

"And when he desired to create the world, all the letters came in turn and each said to the Holy One, blessed be He: Lord of the Universe, may it be Your will that the world be created through me. ... When aleph saw that the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to create the world through bet, she stood to one side and was silent, until the Holy One, blessed be He, called her and said to her: aleph, why are you silent; why do you not speak as your companions? Aleph answered and said before Him: Lord of the Universe, My companions amount to much, but I am of little value. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to her: No wonder that you are the first and the sovereign, since I am One and you are one. Since you have been humble, I will glorify you by making you a thousand (elef)."

"The only letter that had refrained from urging its claims was the modest Alef, and God rewarded it later for its humility by giving it the first place in the Decalogue."

"Some claim to find a satisfactory explanation of the origin of this letter in that it represents an ox-yoke, or the head of an Ox, the horns forming the top part of the letter. This is highly significant, for the letter when pronounced as Aleph and spelt in full h, means an Ox or Bull, an admirable symbol to denote the generative power of Nature."

"Hebrew was generally considered the province of men and became associated with the male scholarly elite, in contrast to Yiddish, which became linked with women, common folk, and daily routine."

"I think that there's something really capacious about Jewish anarchism and its multilingualism, its “Yes, and…”-ness. Think about the importance of multilingualism and contrast that with Zionist single-language ideology: just Hebrew and nothing but Hebrew."

"Attempting to meet European standards, Jewish writers exerted tremendous efforts to develop and enrich the Jews' internal languages of Hebrew and Yiddish, all the while combating unfavorable ideas about each...Hebrew, for its part, was considered a dead tongue in need of massive revision. Both languages were invigorated by the extensive enterprise of translation and the expansion of Jewish writing to areas like politics, art, and sciences, which, with rare exception, were not previously found within either canon."

"[O]ur Hebrew poets of to-day — for the ancient tongue has never died out — have a freedom of expression and a privilege to develop the language which their forbears would have envied. Yet, throughout all, it is the same noble language of the Bible that speaks and sings, the same simple constructions that please and fascinate."

"A university teaches. What does it teach? It must obviously teach all the languages in which the great literatures which have been preserved were written — Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and English."

"To this day our language has kept its stony, concentrated, concise character, striving for the essential. This makes Hebrew practically untranslatable; a phrase of three words in Hebrew becomes a phrase of eighteen words in French, so you can imagine what it does to poetry...Our history is not only the history of a people, but also the history of a language...Some parts of our tradition are widely known; others are less known because it is so difficult to translate from Hebrew. Whole theories were built upon incorrect translations from Hebrew."

"... Zionism invented Hebrew as an everyday language, because no other language of the Jews committed them to the construction of a territorial state."

"[It is the] iron law of every colonizing movement, a law which knows of no exceptions, a law which existed in all times and under all circumstances. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else – or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempts to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not “difficult”, not “dangerous” but IMPOSSIBLE! … Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonialization."

"the silence of women was, for better or worse, built into the culture of Hebrew as a sacred language. Talmudic study was not for women, nor was the language of liturgy; women's worship was separated from men's; tkhines, special prayers for women, were usually written in Yiddish, the "mother tongue." Thus the sacred linguistic soil from which Hebrew poetry-sacred and secular-sprang for nearly two millennia, was off-limits for most women."