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

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.

So let’s analyze what these Hebrew words on this box is saying.

The word with the funny-looking letters in red is written in script. Written Hebrew comes in two varieties, block format, which is what we have been dealing with until now, and script. We shall leave that one aside for now.

Below that, we see a four letter word: מצות

mem - tsadi - vav - tav

mem maps to “m”

tsadi maps to “ts” or “tz”

vav is either a vowel helper or maps to a “v”

tav maps to “t”

Hence, m - ts - v? - t. Since this happens to be a box of matzos, it is fairly certain that this word is the Hebrew for matzos. Makes sense. If that is the case, then the vav is likely a vowel helper, rather than a consonant “v”, since it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Since there is a long “o” sound in “matzos” between the tsadi and the tav, it must be a vowel helper with the digesh on the top (for the “o” sound).

Now for the two word phrase underneath that. It’s a bit blurry, small. and hard to make out in the picture, but it is:

כשר לפםח

The first word is kaf - shin/sin - resh

kaf maps to “ch” (if there is no digesh) or “k” (if the digesh is present inside the kaf)

shin/sin maps to “sh” or “s” (depending on the position of the digesh)

resh maps to “r”

There are 2 * 2 * 1 = 4 different possibilities of what this word could be.

K SH R

CH SH R

K S R

CH S R

They are seem to point to the well-known kosher. Hence, the kaf is a “k”, with a digesh, and the shin/sin is a shin.

Now the other word is lamed - pey/fey - final mem - chet

lamed maps to “l”

pey/fey maps to “p” (digesh present) or “f” (digesh not present)

final mem maps to “m”

chet maps to “ch”

Now this word has me totally mystified. That is because of the final mem and its position within the word. During the class, we were taught that certain letters in the Hebrew alphabet have final forms. They are called final forms because they appear at the end of the word. But here, obviously, the final mem does not appear at the end of this word, but rather second to last. Well, I find this rather strange and confusing. I considered the possibility that it might be a samech (ס) instead of the final mem (ם), since they do closely resemble each other. But looking at the picture, it has to be the final mem because the letter does not have a rounded bottom, like the samech, but is flat and square.

But anyway,

L P M CH

L F M CH

I have no idea what this word is. It’s probably a reference to passover. Why do I think that? Well because on the other side of this box, I see this:

I

I will have to keep that strange word in mind for future inquiry.

The first time I have ever had matzos was when I was in Mrs Gerwirtz’s history class during my junior year at the Bronx High School of Science. She brought in matzos and butter for the whole class and we ate it during class. It was cool. I must admit that I had heard of the Israelites and the unleavened bread as well as the accompanying story, so matzos was not an unfamiliar term to me at the time, but it was my first time seeing it and eating it. The experience was rather anti-climactic. I’d admit the stuff does taste like cardboard when eating it raw. Someone told me the Jews have devised all kinds of ways to make it taste better. Personally, I have one also. I like to eat my matzos with sardines on them. Now I know some of you might be thinking “ohh, nasty”. But it’s quite good. Try it. I got this idea from the movie “The Burbs” with Tom Hanks. There is a scene where the Tom Hanks character is offered some pretzels with sardines. He eats it with a grim look on his face, but as he chews, his face changes as if to suggest “hey, not bad”.

Yummy.

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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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 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.

This image looks a bit blurry. I used the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to sharpen and rescale it:

OK, much better.

The objective is to determine what this sign is saying.

For a beginning student of the Hebrew alphabet, one of the difficulties in reading random Hebrew street signs or phrases is the fact that the vowels are omitted. Indeed, in this particular example, only consonants are shown (in block letter format) and the vowels are implicitly understood.

This vowel omission convention happens because it is a shorthand for reasons of convenience (the Jews happen to be lazy just like the rest of us).

It happens in Old Testament Systematic Theology also. One of the many names of God, Yahweh, happens to be represented as follows: YHWH. There are no vowels there. It is implicitly understood.

I shall reproduce the phrase here:

תבש רמוש

Note: I re-wrote the phrase in mirror-inverse of the original because Hebrew sentences are read right to left, unlike English where it is read left to right. Some purists may think doing something like that is sacrilege. Don’t worry. I’ll remember to put the phrase back in the correct order after I’m done. You have to do this kind of mental gear shift when reading Hebrew, the feeling is rather akin to driving a car in England or Ireland, where the steering wheel is on the right and you drive on the left side of the road.

Each letter has a name:

ש - shin or sin, depending on the position of the digesh*.

ו - vav

מ - mem

ר - resh

ב - bet

ת - tav

* basically a small dot that appears somewhere around or in and close to that letter. It is also omitted for implicit understanding shorthand.

The cool thing about Hebrew is that you can map each letter to a corresponding letter, or a dual letter combination, in the English alphabet.

Shin maps to “sh”

Sin maps to “s”

Vav maps to “v”

Mem maps to “m”

Bet maps to “b” or “v”, depending upon the presence of a digesh in that letter.

Tav maps to “t”

It’s not always a one-to-one mapping. There are some letters that are different but represents the same “saying-sound”. For example, the sin and the samech (ס), have the same saying-sound. It is sort of reminescent of homonyms, words that are spelled differently but have the same pronunciation. I shall call these letters homo-letters.

The first order of business is to identify which letters are certain and which have a degree of uncertainty as to what it really is. The mem, resh, and the tav are certain and definite. The ones that are in doubt are the:

sin/shin

vav

bet.

sin/shin can be either sin or shin, depending upon the position of the digesh. Since the digesh is not shown, it is uncertain. If the digesh is on the right hand side, then it is a shin. Otherwise, it is a sin. Helpful mneumonic: it is no ’sin’ to be a lefty, ’she’ is always right.

The bet can either be a “v” or a “b”, with corresponding saying-sounds, depending upon the presence or absence of a digesh inside the letter. If there is a digesh, then it is a “b”. Otherwise, it is a “v”. Helpful mneumonic: if it contains the digesh, it looks like a catcher’s mitt holding a ball, otherwise it looks vacant.

Lastly, the vav. Now this letter is a bit more complicated. Not only can it be just a regular consonant, but in certain cases, it plays a role of a “vowel-helper” within a word. If it is a vowel-helper, then it can be one of three different, nested possibilities as a vowel-helper (v-h):

v-h for a preceding vowel.

v-h in and of itself.

If the second case is true , then it can be one of two further possibilities:

digesh on top, wherein it would have an “o” saying-sound.

digesh in middle, wherein it would have an “ooh” saying-sound.

Given all these different possibilities, there are

(2 * 3 * 1 * 1) * (2 * 2 * 1) =

24 different possibilities of what that phrase could be. If one factors in vowels and the schva, there are a lot more possibilties. But to keep things simple, we shall conveniently disregard the vowels and the schva.

Now, this is the juncture where the logical, letter-crunching part of the decoding ends and where “social engineering” begins. In order to correctly “fill in the gaps”, one must rely upon an intuitive feel for which possibility is likely to be the correct one, based upon a general knowledge base of Hebrew words. When that is not sufficient, then one must interact with a person familiar with Hebrew (preferably one with long hair and nice hips) to fill in the remaining gaps.

You start with the easy part first. Now the word

תבש

approximates as

S V T

S B T

SH V T

SH B T

you pronounce each possibility out loud, mentally filling in the missing vowels as you do so. Some will intuitively sound “more right” than others. Each approximation points in a general direction of the true word and its pronunciation (like probability amplitude vectors which are integrated over time to reveal a superposition vector for an event in quantum electrodynamics*). Each vaguely sounds like the well-known word shabbat, which is Sabbath in English.

Therefore, for that word:

The “sin/shin” uncertainty collapses to a “sh” and the “v/b” uncertainty collapses to a “b”.

The other word is more tougher, because of the presence of the complicated vav, which can also be a vowel-helper. Consider each possibility, pronouncing each one out loud and feel them out for which one feels more “right”:

SH V M R

S V M R

SH o M R

SH ooh M R

S o M R

S ooh M R

The word feels better with the “sin/shin” as a “shin”, and since the other word revealed itself to contain a “shin”, it is likely that it is a “shin” for this one as well. As for the “vav”, turns out it actually feels awkward and clumsy as a “v”. So it is likely a vowel-helper. But which one? The possibilities can be as diverse as

SH a M R to SH ooh M R

This is where you need to do some “social engineering” with someone with a Hebrew background, preferably one with long hair and nice tits, I mean, hips.

The phrase is pronounced as:

Shomar Shabbat.

Turns out that this particular construction site waste dumpster is an observer of the Jewish Sabbath.

Now, Hebrew is phonetic. That means it is possible to read a text of Hebrew beautifully and have absolutely no idea what it all means. In this sense, Hebrew is the same as hangeul, the only East Asian written language that is completely an alphabet, rather than a conglomeration of thousands upon thousands of pictogram characters. In order to fill in this gap, one must do some “social engineering” with someone with a Hebrew background, preferably one with long hair and nice…you get the idea.

* The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Richard P Feynman

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.