The Hebrew word for winter is ‘horef’. Please bear with me if you don’t know Hebrew; I’ll teach you some. Let’s start with the ‘het’:

This letter is pronounced with the strong constricting sound in the back of your throat.

And does anyone know what holiday begins with a het? (Look in the window at the right side of my scribble at top).

Next letter in ‘horef’ is the ‘reish’:

There is a holiday in the middle of the winter that is called the New Year for Trees (Rosh Hashanah L’Elanot). And wouldn’t you know it, the ‘New’ in Hebrew is translated as ‘Rosh’, so it begins with a ‘reish’. The holiday is called Tu B’Shvat. It may be strange to us in more northern climates that a tree holiday is in the middle of winter, but the buds in Israel start early.

Finally, the last letter in ‘horef’ is a pey-sofit, an ending pey:

This is the beginning letter of a holiday that occurs toward the end of winter. Anyone know that holiday, that begins with a ‘P’ in English?

This little acronym of the winter Jewish holidays was created by our friend James Moché. James told me he was willing to have me post this as long as when it gets spread all over the internet, it has his name on it.

When my kids were in nursery school, they used to do this project that I loved. They would bring home a present, and inside the present was a paper book and a toy sword. Why? Keep reading.

In this week’s parsha of Vayishlach, Yaakov prepares to meet Esav, whom he has not seen in many years. Through messengers, Yaakov learns that Esav his brother still does not like him and is headed to see him with an army of 400 people. So what does Yaakov do to prepare? Rashi says he readied himself for three things: paying tribute (the present), prayer (the book, representing a siddur) or war (the sword or knife).

I’ve heard peaceniks and hawks both use this parsha to justify their approach to enemies. But I’m not sure Abe Lincoln’s quote really is valid for dealing with a whole nation of belligerents.

So who’s Timna? At the end of the parsha, it says: “And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz Esau’s son; and she bore to Eliphaz Amalek. ” Why is this relevant? According to Sanhedrin 99b, her son Amalek became the archenemy of Judaism because she had been rejected by Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov as a convert. Rabbi Twerski suggests that even if they had needed to reject her, they could have done it in a nicer way.

So this parsha really does have a lot to say about war and enemies. You may have some ideas about how some of this could be relevant today. If I had to come up with some good idea, I would never be able to hit the ‘Publish’ button, so here’s the post as is.

Ilana-Davita has more on settling disputes and this parsha.

What else is going on in the blogosphere:

• Tributyltin: can this crop chemical make you fat?
• Oy, vay: oy has a Hebrew source but vay is Greek
• Nature’s Best Photography 2008 Awards

He abandoned us once again to go on a two-day camping trip with his friend and his friend’s family (they went to South Jersey, somewhere in the Pine Barrens). This is after leaving us for a month to go to Camp Stone in western Pennsylvania.

By the way, he absolutely loved Camp Stone! He came back learning the camp lingo, the same lingo that I learned as a kid, when I went to Camp Moshava in eastern Pennsylvania. A little education in Camp Hebrew, if you care to learn:

The photo was taken at Cup of Joe’s in Jerusalem, across from Independence Park. The simple pasta dishes we ate there tasted fine, though my eldest son complained 1) you had to ask for a kids’ menu and 2) the plain pasta with butter was very plain to him. He’s hard to please. Though he liked the one Asian restaurant we went to in Jerusalem, whereas I found it too saucy, not enough fresh vegetables, and no brown rice.

If you’ve made it this far, be sure to visit Frumhouse’s JPIX Carnival. Lots of photos, including some of mine. Great job, Frumhouse!

Blogging is to oneself

Conversation in our house yesterday:
Friend of Hubby: How do you say ‘to blog’ in Hebrew? Is it “l’blohg” or “l’baleyg”?
Hubby: L’hitbaleyg.
(Explanation: L’hitbaleyg is a verb construction in Hebrew called hitpael. Hitpael is a verb in which one does something to oneself, such as l’hitlabesh is to get oneself dressed. So since blogging is often about oneself, it fits).

Why humor suffers in translation

Marx Brothers line:
Soup and rice. Soup and rice. Soup-rice, soup-rice, surprise.
Translation into Hebrew:
Marak v’orez. Marak v’orez. Marak-orez, marak-orez, Hafta’ah!

Really funny: Benji tries to woo Israeli women

This is the phrase in the original Hebrew:

This is the 12th of the Rambam‘s 13 Principles of Faith. (thanks, LOZ)

So, getting back to Middle Son: he had a vocabulary test last week. I often help him study for Hebrew tests, because I really enjoy learning along with him. My husband studies with him on his Mishneh, social studies, science, and other tests. His Hebrew teacher is definitely his most challenging teacher.

One of the words on his test was: יתמהמה
Transliteration: yitmameihah
Say that ten times fast. “yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah yitmameihah ”
Hard, no?
Now what happens if the teacher gives you the following as a translation for the strange word “yitmameihah”, and you are a 5th grader with a 5th grade vocabulary:
procrastinate
(other translations say “linger” or “tarry”)

So my son did not know what “procrastinate” meant. So I came up with some explanation, something about delaying something happening and continued to test him, alternatively asking him the Hebrew or the English word. He had a very difficult time with this word.

So I told him:
mem-heh-mem-heh
In Hebrew, the roots of a word are often only three letters. This is an exception word, one that has a seemingly two letter root (mem being the first and heh being the second), and the root is doubled, thus “mem-heh-mem-heh”. A similar word might be wheel: galgal. The “yit” part of “yitmameihah” means that it is hitpael, or a reflexive verb, one that is done to oneself. I was hoping that by breaking down the word into its parts, he might be able to remember it.

No such luck. On Friday afternoon, after the test was over and he was home, I asked him how he did on the test. “Good,” he replied. I believe him. He usually knows.

“How do you say ‘procrastinate’ ?” I quizzed him.
I got some garbled answer that sounded sort of like a distance relative of “yitmameihah”.
Oh, well.

If you have Windows XP or Vista, you can type in Hebrew (type ‘microsoft xp hebrew’ in a search engine and click on the Microsoft link to learn how). A lot of it is just getting used to changing the language bar on your computer from EN to HE and back again. I did the XP set up a while back; my son and I did the Vista set up for Hebrew recently, and it was REALLY easy. He’s my resident typing in Hebrew expert; he recently submitted a book report totally typed in Hebrew.

Learn Hebrew is a free, on-line, educational resource
to learn Hebrew words. The flash site incorporates
46 topics, along with over 1,700 Hebrew words and
phrases. Each Hebrew word is presented as an image
with nikud [vowels]. When you click on a word or phrase
you can hear it spoken. The high quality audio
was created in a sound studio.

The email was from Jacb Richman. Thanks, Jacob!

 See all my posts about learning Hebrew.

If anyone wants the answers, I’ll put them in the comments. If you already know Hebrew, feel free to put a joke in the comments instead. Jokes always appreciated.

Somewhere I saw a lecture: “Learn to write before you learn to read.” Now, that is what I have been trying to tell her teacher! If she could get the kids to at least learn to write their names in Hebrew, it will help with letter recognition (that is how she is taught in her English class).

Finally, she has learned alef. It helps that is the first letter of her name. Here’s a little of the process of learning to write a “print-style” alef. First, what direction does the slant go in? Does it look like this:

or like this:

Then, she needs to add those little lines to it. The ones that come out of the bigger slant. An early alef of hers looked like this:

For those of you that don’t know Hebrew, the above is NOT an alef.

Meanwhile, the alefs that she sees often have a fanciness to them, such as the one I have in the upper corner of this post. So sometimes she spends time embellishing her written letters, because that is what she sees.

Lately, her alef has looked a bit like an X. I guess that’s close.

Lucky for her, her second language doesn’t have to be Farsi. We had a guest speaker come talk to us about Farsi on Sunday. But that is a subject for another post.