Q&A: If ancient Israel had a questions & answers website, what kind of questions would they ask?

Ooh boy—that’s a great question. Here are a few, to titillate the palate:

Post-Exodus:

• Are we there, yet?
• Why isn’t God allowing Moses to enter the Holy Land? Isn’t that mean, considering all he’s done?

Judges period:

• How come we don’t have a king, like all the other nations?
• If God promised us the whole of Canaan, why did he allow the Philistines to settle on the coast and torment us? And why can’t we have iron weapons, too?
• Why do Ephraimites lisp?
• Is it OK for me to hate Manassehites?
• Why are we pretending that the Dan tribe are one of us—when everyone knows that they’re just assimilated Philistines? (Why should we even trust them?)
• Why don’t the Zvulunites and Issacharites do something useful, like become mariners, like the Phoenicians?
• If Jacob was supposed to be a weakling compared to Esau, how was he able to wrestle with an angel all night? Does this mean that Esau could have beaten the angel?
• Would someone kindly clarify once and for all what’s in the Ark of the Covenant?

United Kingdom (~1050 – 931 BCE):

Israelite (northern kingdom) questions:

• Why are the Judeans so stuck up? Ephraim is a bigger tribe, and Judah wasn’t even Jacob’s eldest son.
• Why do we have to accept the House of David as our royal family? David’s great-grandmother wasn’t even Judean, but Moabite.
• Why does Jerusalem—which wasn’t even an Israelite city to begin with—get to host the Temple, and not Beit-El, which was founded by Jacob expressly for that purpose?

Post-breakup of the united kingdom:

• Why do liberals dislike King Manasseh so much? Can’t they see how much good he’s doing us?
• Why are the Judahite prophets such dour sticks-in-the-mud? Why can’t they be charismatic miracle-workers, like our Elijah, or Elisha?

Judea, King Hezekiah reign, after fall of Israel (722 – 696 BCE):

• If Isaac was Abraham’s son, why did he send his son Jacob to Haran [in southeastern Turkey] as the old homestead, instead of to Ur of Chaldees, where Abraham was from?
• So what IS God’s name? Is it El, or that other one that we’re not allowed to say?
• Why are there two stories of Creation? Which one is true?
• Why are the northerners so obsessed with the Exodus? Why do we Judeans, who had the good sense not to go to Egypt in the first place, have to keep hearing about how they suffered there?
• Why do northerners keep whining? Aren’t they appreciative that we took them in after their kingdom was destroyed?

En route to exile in Babylon (~585 BCE)

• Are we there, yet?

In Babylon, when Cyrus allows Judeans to return to Judea

• Aww—do we HAVE to go back? Life is pretty good here.

Second Temple period:

• Why are we using the Aramaic script instead of Hebrew script that we used for a thousand years after the Exodus? Isn’t the Hebrew script the one that Moses and King David used?
• Why are we referring to the poor of the land who stayed behind when we were exiled to Babylon as “Samaritans”, and not as Judeans?

I could go on, but I have a day job…

[Originally posted on Quora, March 11, 2018]

The Camel in the Room

When Martha Graham — the American high priestess of modern dance — first arrived in Israel in 1956 for a performance tour with her dance company, it was to a rapturous reception. They returned for a further series of performances in 1958 and 1961, to similar acclaim.

So you can imagine the starstruck Israelis’ delight when, in November 1964, the Baroness de Rothschild founded the Batsheva Dance Company, Graham agreed to serve as its artistic adviser.

Smiles faded, however, when, in an interview with Dance Magazine about her work in Israel and the new dance that she was about to stage, Graham said:

This was a promise to them. Although I am not Jewish, I immediately felt drawn to their country […] to the desert, a place of terror and magic. [My emphasis—JO-S]

Q&A: Why in Hebrew is the name “Golda” written גולדה, and Nietzsche as ניטשה – i.e. with the letter ה at the end, instead of aleph (גולדא, ניטשא)?

Good question. The answer is twofold:

1. Words that end with ‘א’ (aleph) are usually associated with Aramaic (where it means ‘the’, as a suffix), and always pronounced /ah/—e.g. אבא (abba = ‘the father’; in Hebrew, ‘Dad’), דווקא (davka = ‘accuracy’; in Hebrew, ‘precisely because’, or ‘to spite’), אדרבא (adrabba = ‘moreover’, in Hebrew: ‘on the contrary’). So while it might work with Golda, it wouldn’t with endings with other vowels, such as Nietzsche.
2. In Hebrew, vowels simply don’t have the same status as consonants. Consonants are regarded as the structure of a word, whereas vowels are akin to colour: it may fade or vary over time, or from one region to the next, but is not an essential part of the form, nor can it exist on its own. Accordingly, a vowel at the end of a word, or name, needs a consonantal placeholder, to signal that ‘this word/name ends with a vowel’). Unlike א, the letter ה (héh, pron. ‘hay’) is not associated with the Aramaic suffix -a, so it’s neutral and can denote either an -ah, or -eh ending (the other three possible vowel endings— -o, -i, -u, are typically indicated by other letters). Thus, Nietzsche = ניטשה, Biannale = ביאנלה, and indeed Moshe = משה.

HTAYQ.

Q&A: What is the story behind the Hebrew expression “No bears and no forest”, and how did it come to mean “That’s a total lie?” Is it based on midrash, or some other source?

OK, the first thing to know is that the Hebrew expression לא דובּים ולא יער (Lo dubim velo ya’ar = “No bears, and no forest”) does not mean “That’s a total lie” but rather “nothing of the sort”.

Read more: Q&A: What is the story behind the Hebrew expression “No bears and no forest”, and how did it come to mean “That’s a total lie?” Is it based on midrash, or some other source?

It is based on a tragically brief yet delightfully vivid and Brothers Grimm-like story in II Kings (2:24) of two she-bears that burst out from the forest and devour 42 children who taunt Elisha the prophet Aleh, aleh, qere’aḥ! (“Go on, go on, Baldie!”) immediately after he has effected his first miracle, after receiving the mantle of prophecy from Elijah.

But the vast majority of native Hebrew speakers today who use the expression today are not thinking of the midrash version of the story, but rather use it as a handy way to allude to any fantastical story and how reality falls far short of it, or simply to refute the premises of someone’s argument.

In this regard, it is similar to the expression לא … ולא נעליים (Lo […] velo na’alayim = “No […] and no shoes”), which is a riff off the Palestinian Arabic expression La […] wala batiḥ (“No <…> and no watermelon”).

Why shoes, or watermelon? Nobody knows, but as they say—why not?

Q&A: What are some phrases that are only used in Hebrew in Israel?

In no particular order:

• יש מצב (Yesh matzáv): “There is a situation” (it’s possible)
• סוף הדרך (Sof hadérekh) “The end of the road” (the ultimate)
• חבל על הזמן (Ḥavál al hazmán)“It’s a waste of time” (Don’t ask, it was so good/bad/bizarre/extreme).
• חי בסרט (Ḥai beséret) “Living in a film” (completely cut off from reality, in La-la-land)

What do you learn from reading the Torah every day?

The sheer number of expressions that are part of everyday speech and writing in modern Hebrew—many of which most Israelis aren’t even aware of their provenance. The following are some examples just from the first two books (Genesis, and Exodus).

Read more: What do you learn from reading the Torah every day?

Some are well known—such as:

• ברחל בתך הקטנה (beRahel bitkha haqtanah) ‘For Rachel your younger daughter’ (Gen. 29:18) which today is used in the borrowed sense of ‘get to the point’, or ‘the nitty gritty’
• בן זקונים (ben zqunim) ‘son of old age’ (Gen. 37:19)
• כבד פה וכבד לשון (kvad peh ukhvad lashon), lit. ‘heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue’, i.e. someone who is not a gifted speaker (Exod. 4:10)

Other expressions people suspect are of biblical origin, but can’t quite place them, such as:

• כתמול שלשום (kitmol shilshom) ‘like yesterday [or] the day before’ or ‘as in the past’ (Gen. 31:2)
• בעל החלומות (baal hahalomot) ‘the dreamer’ (Gen. 37:19)
• נעשה ונשמע (naaseh venishma) ‘we shall do and and we shall obey’ (Exod. 24:7)

But others are such an integral part of everyday language that few people suspect that they are of biblical origin, such as:

• כסף עובר לסוחר (kessef over lasoher) lit. ‘money passing to the merchant’ = ready cash (Gen. 23:16)
• עשה לי מטעמים (aseh li mat’amim) ‘Make me delectables’ (Gen. 27:4) – in reference to any collection of delicious dishes.
• אעשה… לביתי (aaseh… lebeiti) lit. ‘I shall make for my home’ = I shall take care of my own first (Gen. 27:4). Usually used today about retiring politicians who exploit the connections they made to feather their nest.
• המשביר (hamashbir) ‘he it was that sold to all the people of the land’ (Gen. 42:6) – The name of Israel’s first department store.
• צידה לדרך (tzeidah laderekh) ‘provisions for the way’ (Gen. 42: 25) – the common reference for food taken on a short trip.
• בבוקר בבוקר (baboqer-baboqer) lit. ‘in the morning-in the morning’ i.e., at first daylight (Exod. 30:7)
• עשרים שנה ומעלה (esrim shanah vama’alah) ‘twenty years and above’ (Exod. 30:14).

It is discoveries such as these that are among the joys of reading the Hebrew Bible.

Q&A: Which of the menorahs is the biblical one, the 7 or 9 candle?

The menorah in the Second Temple was seven-branched:

It is also the symbol of the modern State of Israel (not, as many might think, the Star of David)—

The nine-branched candelabrum is, strictly speaking, not called a menorah, but a ḥanukkiah, because it is used to mark the eight days of Hanukkah (the ninth candle being the shamash (from the root sh-m-sh, meaning ‘sun’)—so-called because it is used to light the other eight).

Q&A: When wishing someone a Good Year for Rosh Hashanah, which is grammatically correct: “L’shanah tovah”, or, “Shanah tovah”?

The greeting commonly used among North American Jews (and possibly elsewhere in the Diaspora) is “L’shanah Tovah!”—which is short for “Brakhot [Blessings] leshanah tovah!,” i.e. “Blessings for a Good Year!”

It is like wishing a Christian person “For a Happy Christmas!”—that is to say, the “L’” at the beginning is entirely redundant if you omit the word Brakhot before it.

The correct greeting is either Shanah Tovah! (lit. “Good Year!”), or simply, Ḥag Samé’aḥ! (lit. “Happy Holiday!)—which is good for all festive Jewish holidays.

Q&A: How do Hebrew pronouns work?

It’s very simple:

• She is he (היא)
• He is who (הוא).
• Who is me (מי)
• Me is oti (אותי)

Next question?

Q&A: Which Bible verse confuses you the most?

II Samuel 5:8—which is, quite rightly, hardly ever mentioned, but should be considered:

ח ויאמר דוד ביום ההוא, כל-מכה יבוסי וייגע בצינור, ואת-הפיסחים ואת-העיוורים, שנואי נפש דוד; על-כן, יאמרו, עיוור ופיסח, לא יבוא אל-הבית.

Translation (King James Version):

Read more: Q&A: Which Bible verse confuses you the most?

8 And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David’ soul, he shall be chief and captain . Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.

Why would David hate the lame and the blind?

Jewish biblical commentators explain it’s because the Jebusites (the founders/inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time) were so confident in the impregnability of their city walls against attack by the Israelites, that they placed lame and blind guards on it. But that seems hardly a reason to hate all lame and blind people with a passion. There’s something behind that verse that we haven’t been told.

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