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.
Anyway, during my Hebrew crash course, I learned that Hebrew pronunciation also comes in two varieties. You guessed it: Ashkenazic and Sephardic. However, the instructor focused only on the Sephardic pronunciation. She didn’t really get into why. Now that I think about it, I should have asked why. But at the time, I was feeling overwhelmed as it were and I was a bit dismayed to hear that there were two distinct modes of pronunciation. It was already bad enough that written Hebrew also came in two formats: script and block. Now there were two modes of pronunciation also? Oy vey! So I didn’t press the issue.
Well, now I find myself curious about it. If I had to venture a guess, I think it is because Sephardic is considered more “authentic” than Ashkenazic. It makes sense because the Ashkenazi are mostly of European background whereas the Sephardic are closer to Medditerranean or Middle-Eastern roots. I could be totally wrong about this though. It’s just a personal hunch.
Anyway, let’s take a look at what it says on this woman’s army fatigue jacket.
צה”ל
tsadi - hey - ” - lamed,
which maps to its English equivalent,
TZ - H - ” L.
I’m not sure what the ” is, or what it is for. That is a matter for future inquiry.
But the word reads as Tzahal, which is the abbreviated name of the Israeli Defense Forces.
For more information on the woman featured above, click here.
Photo source: Jewish Mayhem Magazine
