Ashkenazic or Sephardic?

Jdate is a dating website that caters to Jewish singles. A buddy of mine and I like to browse through the women’s ads every once in a while, look at their pictures and their profiles. Now in Jdate, like many other similar dating websites, the profile contains various bits of information about the person, incuding a specific field which indicates whether she is Ashkenazic or Sephardic. A little game that I like to play is to look at the person’s picture and try to guess whether she is Ashkenazic or Sephardic, just from her looks, and then click on the profile link to see whether I was correct or not. I tried this a few times and this exercise confirmed something which I already suspected: that I don’t know jack.

 

The Matzo Box

I have several boxes of matzos sitting on my floor in my apartment. One day I went to visit my parents, who live in the Bronx. My parents tend to buy things in bulk and store them in the dining room. Anyway, I come home and I see what appeared to be about a hundred boxes of matzos in the dining room. That surprised me because I didn’t know my parents liked matzos (or even knew what they were). My mother explained that the local Pathmark was giving them away for free. So she took as much as she could. My mother thrives on bargains; free is even better. When I left, she urged me to take some.

I ♥ New York T-shirt

I was dating a Jewish girl from Long Island (Long Gyland) who got a kick out of the fact that I was taking a course in Hebrew. So she gave me this t-shirt to wear:

Now, I found myself quite skeptical of the Hebrew words on this t-shirt. This t-shirt is the kind that one finds in shops in NYC that caters to tourists looking for souvenirs. I don’t know if I can trust the validity of the words printed on this shirt.

But let’s analyze it.

We start with the word in big letters on the top right, since that appears to be the easier one. I shall reproduce it here:

אני

The first letter (right-most) is aleph. Next is nun. Third and last is yud.

The aleph is silent. Nun maps to an “n”. Yud maps to a “y”.

Obviously, aleph-nun-yud is the Hebrew equivalent of “NY”. Why there is an aleph in the beginning, I do not know. It is a matter for future inquiry.

Now for the other word (the one inside the heart). The fact that it is inside a heart and the fact that this is an “I love NY” t-shirt informs me that this word might have something to do with the word “love” (gee, I’m good, aren’t I?) Let’s reproduce it here:

אוהב

Starting from the right-most end, it is aleph, vav, hey, bet/vet.

Now I am going to cheat a little and do a search on google.

I found an article entitled “Love, Jewish Style” by Ahuva Bloomfield. Here is a paragraph that I found in that article:

Understanding the concepts that are invested in words can aid us in our own lives. As an interesting example, the word “love” which is thrown about so freely in English, has a special meaning in Hebrew. Love in Hebrew is “Ahava”, אהבה, which is made up of three basic Hebrew letters, אהב. These three letters actually are broken down into two parts: a two letter base or root, הב, and the first letter, א, which is a modifier. The meaning of the two letter base, הב, is “to give”. The letter “aleph” א, which precedes these two letters comes to modify the meaning of the base word, “give”. The meaning of אהבה, is “I give” and also “love”.

Well, that explains things rather nicely. But Bloomfield only tells us what the Hebrew word for “love” is. What about “I love”?

So I did another google search. Found something:

Hmmm.

It appears that אני, aleph-nun-yud or ani, is really “I”, instead of “NY”.

Now for the other word, אוהב, should really be אהבה instead, I think.

So the shirt should read

NY אני אהבה

This is really confusing.

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The Hebrew Hacker sticker

Well, what’d you know?

I did a search on google for “hebrew hacker” to see if my site appeared and this is what I found:

Yes, it says “hacker”. I’ll take this as a good sign.

The aleph is silent. But I wonder why it was put there?

 

The Dumpster

The following photo is a sign pasted on the side of a waste dumpster at a construction site in Brooklyn. It was taken with my LG camera cell phone.

Introduction to The Hebrew Hacker

The Hebrew Hacker is a pun on the title of a 2003 movie called The Hebrew Hammer , starring Adam Goldberg and Judy Greer. It’s a good movie to watch when you have nothing to do on a weekend afternoon, even if you’re not Jewish. It parodies and satirizes common Jewish stereotypes (Jewish mothers, the Jewish media conspiracy, etc), examines Jewish-American identity politics (a young Mordechai wrestles with the feeling of being left out during the Christmas season), and even touches upon intra-gender solidarity from a Jewish-American perspective (Mordechai [Adam Goldberg] has the hots for a blonde shiksa but Esther [Judy Greer] wins him over).

I took a 5 week crash course in the Hebrew alphabet from 9/12/06 - 10/10/06 at the JCC in Manhattan. It was being offered for free. This course (which is one of two crash courses in learning to read Hebrew using the so-called ulpan method) is funded and sponsored by the National Jewish Outreach Program (NJOP). They conduct classes in synagogues and JCCs (which is basically like a Jewish YMCA) all over North America.

Initially, I had absolutely no prior background in Hebrew. Before taking the class, I really had no idea what to expect. I thought it would be really difficult. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not so. I really enjoyed the class and learned a lot. The instructor, Barbara Simon, was engaging and enthusiatic. The class members consisted of about 25 students, mostly women. There were a handful of students who were obviously not Jewish, and I was one of them. I had a wonderful time.

After the 5 weeks was over, I was confronted with the problem of not having any reasons or motivation in my life to continue and maintain my little adventure into the study of the aleph, bet, gimel. It’s not like I go to a synagogue for Shabbat services, have a career or occupation that requires a knowledge of Hebrew, or friends who share this idiosyncratic interest of mine.

Then one day, near my workplace, I saw a construction site dumpster in the street next to a new condominium that was being built in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn. Pasted on the side of the dumpster was a decal sign with Hebrew words written on it. I found myself trying to decipher it, using the knowledge I gained from the crash course. That’s when I hit upon the idea for this blog.

I’ve decided that I will go around, taking snapshots of random street occurances of Hebrew words and phrases, post them here on my blog, and analyze them. Since I live near NYC, working in Brooklyn where there is a sizable Hasidic Jewish community, I figure I shouldn’t lack for opportunities. I’m rather psyched about this project of mine. I hope that it would also attract like-minded folks who share an interest in learning Hebrew so that we may sharpen each other, like knives.

Please bear in mind that I am no language expert, nor a linguistics geek, or anything of that sort. I’m just a regular guy with a slightly irregular, off-beat interest. The study of foreign languages was actually one of my biggest weaknesses when I was in school. I’m much better with concepts, rather than rote memorization of words and grammar, which is actually just bunch of arbitrary rules and convention made up by people. I’ll probably write a lot of stupid stuff, seem awfully clueless at times, etc. I welcome all constructive criticism from my readers and look forward to some lively discussions.