After completing a cycle of Torah with Targum Onkelos, this year I am going to try to complete a cycle with Peshitta and Septuagint as well, or ? and ?, as BHS refers to them. Here is something I noticed in Genesis chapter 1: In verse 11 God commands the creation of trees: וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים […]
Jim Davila wonders how one would say Sic transit gloria mundi in Aramaic, a challenge that I can’t resist. A literal translation would be something like כדין יעבר שבהורא דעלמא, but what might be a more idiomatic rendering? In modern Hebrew, אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים is used in almost exactly the same way as sic transit […]
I was walking home the other day when a car passed me with a bumper sticker like this: . He pulled in and parked ahead of me so I waited for him to get out and said politely צַפְרָא טָבָא, and told him that I liked the sticker, and where could I get one? He […]
I was saying yesterday that it’s a pity that there’s no localisation of Firefox into Aramaic. I wasn’t very serious, because I didn’t think there would be many people who would use it, but it turns out there’s at least one potential client: Monica Bellucci. Monica … can speak Italian, French, English and Aramaic fluently. […]
I realized much too late that the last two posts have the wrong title. It’s actually called Hebrew Book Week, (שבוע הספר העברי), not Jewish Book Week. Neither title is really totally appropriate. There are lots of Hebrew books on sale that aren’t in any way Jewish, in fact my impression is that about 75% […]