Q&A: When Israelis Hebraized their last names in the 1930-60s, was there any paperwork needed or people just started using the new surname?

People usually started by simply adopting the new surname informally, often followed by their original surname in parentheses, until their new surname becomes better known among the public—e.g. David Ben-Gurion (né Grin). Then after a year or two, they made it official by registering it at the Ministry of the Interior (or its equivalent during the British Mandate period). This was useful, as in some cases the user might decide to change the name to something else, or to tweak it (as happened in my own family).

Q&A: Why do Judean coins minted during the Hasmonean dynasty or the first Jewish-Roman war contain text in paleo-Hebrew script?

It was a kind of nationalist affectation, to proclaim the ancestral, pre-Babylonian-exile, Israelite origins of the newly-independent Hasmonean state—a bit like the motto of the British Royal Family (Dieu et mon droit – ‘God and my right’) is in French, harking back to its Norman origins.

Read more: Q&A: Why do Judean coins minted during the Hasmonean dynasty or the first Jewish-Roman war contain text in paleo-Hebrew script?

Modern Israel, by the way, does much the same: the Old Hebrew script is used on the modern sheqel coin (bottom left):

The difference is, in Hasmonean times, people knew what the Old Hebrew text said, whereas 99.9% of modern Israelis haven’t a clue: most people assume it says ‘sheqel’, but in fact, it spells Yehud, which ironically is not Hebrew, but the Persian name for its Judean province, dating back to the sixth century BCE, when Persia had just conquered the Babylonian empire, and allowed all exiled nations (the Judeans included) to return to their ancestral homes.

Q&A: What is the mystery in Genesis 1:1?What’s the Hebrew equivalent of the Yiddish word “Mensch”?

Off the top of my head, there is no single Hebrew term that truly conveys the same meaning of someone who is honourable, courageous, courteous, and just an all-round good person.

The closest Hebrew terms that I can think of are:

Q&A: What is the mystery in Genesis 1:1?Why does the modern Hebrew script look so square?

Before the invention of printing, the ‘look’ of a script was determined by those in charge of producing large amounts of text—the professional scribes.

When Judeans first adopted the Assyrian version of the Canaanite script as their new script, some time in the 6th centuring BCE, the characters looked like this (pardon the letter order, which is left-to-right order, instead of right-to-left):

Q&A: Is the Phoenician alphabet suitable for writing modern Hebrew?

You could—the letters are substantially the same (functionally speaking) as the modern Hebrew alphabet—but it is graphically less sophisticated than its derivatives, namely the Greek & Roman alphabets, and the Assyrian script which gave rise to the revised form of Hebrew from the Second Temple period onwards, known today as “Square Script”:

Q&A: What does it mean in modern Hebrew when someone wraps up what they are saying by adding “v’shalom al Yisrael” (literally “and Peace upon Israel/upon the entire Jewish people”)?

It means “Done and dusted”, i.e. “there’s nothing more to do—move on.”

It’s taken from the last two verses of Psalms 128, which describes the cherished vision of a future where the people of Israel are blessed, and all is good in the world—a kind of utopia, where we needn’t strive any more:

ה יברכך יהוה מציון: וראה בטוב ירושלים–כל ימי חייך.

ו וראה-בנים לבניך: שלום על-ישראל.

5 The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life.

6 Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel.

Q&A: Could a contemporary Hebrew speaker talk to a biblical Hebrew speaker?

Short answer: Yes.

Pronunciation is undoubtedly very different today—but then the same is true for English of Chaucer’s or even Shakespeare’s time and today. (Heck, these days I’m reading Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit, and I’m having a hard time understanding the characters’ 1920s slang…). 

Q&A: Is it true that today’s Hebrew Torah is actually the Hebrew translation of the Greek Torah?

Page from the Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Bible

I was about to dismiss this seemingly silly question with a flippant answer along the lines of “Yes, and Shakespeare’s writings were much better in the original German,” when it struck me that OP might be confusing “the Hebrew Torah” with the New Testament.

How did the Hebrew “R” change from a rolled “R” to a French-like “R”?

The short answer is because most senior Israeli politicians in the 1950s through early ’70s (such as David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin, Shimon Peres, etc.) were foreign-born and couldn’t do the guttural rolling Rs, so used trilling Rs instead, as in their native Russian or Polish—whereas modern-day leaders are almost invariably native Israelis. (The exceptions were Golda Meir and Abba Eban, whose mother tongue was English, so they spoke with painfully Anglo-Saxon Rs.)

But as we say in Hebrew, בואו נעשה סדר בדברים—let’s clear up some things, as there’s a common confusion here, even among Israelis themselves.

Q&A: In Hebrew, if shamartem is “you guarded” (2nd person masc. plural) and shamroom is “they guarded them,” then what is “you guarded them” (2nd.masc.pl)?

This is a good question, as it highlights how Hebrew, in its love of concision by cramming prepositions and possessive indicators into the prefixes and suffixes of verbs and nouns, can sometimes overload itself.

As you partly point out in your question:

• “you guarded” (m.sing.): shamárta
• “you guarded” (m.plural): shamártem