Shared joy: finished Genesis

[Barry Gold]

Somewhere around 10 years ago, Lee decided that she wanted to be able to
read the Bible(*) in the original Hebrew, and I decided I wanted in on
this. Our Rabbi was kind enough to teach us how to read Biblical Hebrew
(actually, mostly checking our progress as we worked through _A
Practical Grammar for Biblical Hebrew_ by J. Weingreen).

Since then, we have been reading. It has taken us nine years to get
through B'reishit (Genesis), but we have done it, and started on Shmot
(Exodus).(+)

We will be celebrating a siyum (look it up in Wikipedia) this Friday. We
will be co-sponsoring the Oneg Shabbat, light snacks served after the
service. (The standard is a large loaf of Challah and a lot of cookies,
but with multiple sponsors we might get some cheeses & crackers or
middle-eastern dips as well.)

This will be a standard (reform) service, lasting maybe 45 minutes. I
expect we'll be called up to the front and the Rabbi will publicly
congratulate us. The real star (if there is one) is the 13-year-old who
is scheduled for a Bar Mitzvah tomorrow. After the service, we adjourn
to the social hall (or outside if it's warm) for kiddush (blessing the
wine) and motzi (blessing the bread and snacks).

I don't know how many Callahanians live in the LA area, but those who do
are welcome to join us in celebrating: 6PM, Friday, May 24.

Santa Monica Synagogue
1448 18th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404

(*) Tanak: Torah (law) + Nevi'im (prophets) + Ketubim
(writings/literature) = the "Jewish Bible". Essentially the same books
that the Christians call the "Old Testament", but grouped differently
and in a different order.

(+) B'reishit = "For the sake of a beginning," or "while beginning". "In
the beginning" is not a good translation. Shmot = names, because it
starts out "These are the names..."

[John W. Vinson]

On Tue, 21 May 2013 11:27:46 -0700, Barry Gold <Barry...@ca.rr.com> wrote:


>We will be celebrating a siyum (look it up in Wikipedia) this Friday.

Mazel tov and congratulations!
--

John the Wysard JVinson *at* Wysard Of Info *dot* com

[Barry Gold]

On 5/21/2013 11:27 AM, Barry Gold wrote:
The real star (if there is one) is the 13-year-old who
> is scheduled for a Bar Mitzvah tomorrow.

Brain fart. That should Bar Mitzvah on Saturday. My brain temporarily
shifted itself to Friday.

[Tesseract]

Mazel tov! Congratulations!

I took your suggestion and looked up siyum in Wikipedia.. As I found,"A
siyum (Hebrew: סיום‎) (“completion”) means the completion of any unit of
Torah study" and "An enduring custom is for the community to complete a
unit of Torah or tractate(s) of Talmud during the 30 days following the
death of a beloved one and hold a communal siyum thereafter, in tribute
and honor of the memory of the deceased." may I humble suggest that you
define a unit of study to be a verse? :-)

How is the "Jewish Bible" organized differently, besides being in a
different order? How is the order different?

How would you write the first verse in the King James version if it is
not "1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

--
Tesseract

[Barry Gold]

On 5/22/2013 1:52 AM, Tesseract wrote:
> I took your suggestion and looked up siyum in Wikipedia.. As I found,"A
> siyum (Hebrew: סיום‎) (“completion”) means the completion of any unit of
> Torah study" and "An enduring custom is for the community to complete a
> unit of Torah or tractate(s) of Talmud during the 30 days following the
> death of a beloved one and hold a communal siyum thereafter, in tribute
> and honor of the memory of the deceased." may I humble suggest that you
> define a unit of study to be a verse? :-)

Somehow a verse doesn't seem like it rates a public celebration. A
whole book, on the other hand, is an achievement.

> How is the "Jewish Bible" organized differently, besides being in a
> different order? How is the order different?

Torah:
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy

Nevi'im:
Joshua
Judges
Samuel
Kings
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
The Twelve (combines Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi)

Ketubim:
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
The Song of Songs
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Daniel
Ezra
Nehemiah
Chronicles

In the Tanak, several books that are divided into First and Second in
the KJV are single books, the minor prophets are a single book, and the
order of the books is rather different.

[John W. Vinson]

On Wed, 22 May 2013 01:52:46 -0700, Tesseract
<hypertesseractBECA...@verywarm.com> wrote:

>How would you write the first verse in the King James version if it is
>not "1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Well, the Torah was probably written down, in Hebrew, in very much its modern
form in the Babelonian Exile in 600-400BCE. Jewish tradition (and the text of
Exodus!) state that it was given to Moses on Mount Sinai a thousand years
before that.

The KJV was translated by scholars in the Church of England in the early
1600's, using the Greek and Hebrew editions available at the time but still
very heavily influenced by traditions deriving from the Latin Vulgate.

[FreyjaW]

Mazel tov! Conga rats!

--
Freyja the NurseWench
http://freyjaw.dreamwidth.org
Twitter: @FreyjaRN
Quando omni flunkus moritati.

[Tesseract]

On 22-May-13 7:30 PM, Barry Gold wrote:
> On 5/22/2013 1:52 AM, Tesseract wrote:
>> I took your suggestion and looked up siyum in Wikipedia.. As I found,"A
>> siyum (Hebrew: סיום‎) (“completion”) means the completion of any unit of
>> Torah study" and "An enduring custom is for the community to complete a
>> unit of Torah or tractate(s) of Talmud during the 30 days following the
>> death of a beloved one and hold a communal siyum thereafter, in tribute
>> and honor of the memory of the deceased." may I humble suggest that you
>> define a unit of study to be a verse? :-)
>
> Somehow a verse doesn't seem like it rates a public celebration. A
> whole book, on the other hand, is an achievement.

I just want you to have an excuse to have a party more often than once
every ten years.

According to
http://www.deafmissions.com/tally/bkchptrvrs.html
Genesis has 1533 verses, which gives 12.7 verses per month. Maybe you
could have a party for each chapter.

Thanks. I guess that I will need some extra coloured tabbed dividers.

>>
>> How would you write the first verse in the King James version if it is
>> not "1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
>>

No? Then I will.

For the sake of a beginning God created the heaven and the earth to mark
the place when the infinite wheel to this spot again.

While beginning to create the heaven and the earth, God was interrupted
buy the telephone and never finished the task.

--
Tesseract

[Tesseract]

They also used existing translations:
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/


--
Tesseract

[Barry Gold]

On 5/23/2013 1:30 AM, Tesseract wrote:
>>> How would you write the first verse in the King James version if it is
>>> not "1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

For the sake of a beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And
the Earth was formless and empty, and darkness was upon the surface of
the deeps. And the spirit of God moved upon the top of the waters. And
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light."

[Barry Gold]

On 5/21/2013 11:27 AM, Barry Gold wrote:
> Somewhere around 10 years ago, Lee decided that she wanted to be able to
> read the Bible(*) in the original Hebrew, and I decided I wanted in on
> this. Our Rabbi was kind enough to teach us how to read Biblical Hebrew
> (actually, mostly checking our progress as we worked through _A
> Practical Grammar for Biblical Hebrew_ by J. Weingreen).
>
> Since then, we have been reading. It has taken us nine years to get
> through B'reishit (Genesis), but we have done it, and started on Shmot
> (Exodus).(+)

Well, we went. It turned out the planned Bar Mitzvah was rescheduled for
another week. So Lee and I were called on for an aliyah. That means
"going up" in Hebrew. When you "make aliyah," you "go up" to Israel.
That shows up all through the Bible (Tanak). Jacob and family "went
down" to Egypt, and Joseph "went up" to bring Jacob's body back to the
Cave of Machpelah.

But "an aliyah" means you "go up" to the Torah, that is, you take part
in the reading of the Torah. In this case, it meant that Lee and I each
held a handle of the scroll to keep it open so the Rabbi could read it.

When I was young, a Bar Mitzvah was a big todo over not much. The kid
would say the blessing before reading the Torah, somebody who could
actually read Hebrew would go through and either read the Hebrew with
translation interspersed (like Jubal had Mike do with Martian in
_Stranger_) or just translate on the fly. Then the Bar Mitzvah boy
would say the blessing after reading the Torah.

Nowadays, at least at SMS, the Bar Mitzvah boy is expected to actually
read from the Torah. This is harder than it sounds, even if you are
reasonably fluent in Biblical Hebrew. The Torah is written without
nikudot(*), so whoever is going to read has to basically memorize the
entire section, 5-10 verses, pronunciation and meaning. Sometimes even
the cantillation, which tells you how to sing the verse.

So it turned out to be a bigger deal than I expected. Several members
took us aside and congratulated us on our achievement. I hope we'll be
able to get through Exodus a little faster.

And thanks to the patrons who congratulated us. It's a nice thing to be
able to share.

(*) Those marks that tell you how to pronounce Hebrew. A dot inside a
letter can change the pronunciation, e.g. the letter Bet is pronounced
"B" with a dot, "V" without; Pay is "P" or "F", Kaf is "K" or "Ch" (as
in "loch"), etc. Nikudot also includes the vowel sounds: ah, eh, ee, oh,
ooh, schva. Changing the sounds changes both the pronunciation and the
meaning. "Shalom" is peace, "Shalem" is wholeness. "Bet" is house, "Bat"
is daughter. ("schva" is the vowel sound in the first syllable of "about")

[John W. Vinson]

On Sat, 25 May 2013 00:23:10 -0700, Barry Gold <Barry...@ca.rr.com> wrote:


>
>Nowadays, at least at SMS, the Bar Mitzvah boy is expected to actually
>read from the Torah. This is harder than it sounds, even if you are
>reasonably fluent in Biblical Hebrew. The Torah is written without
>nikudot(*), so whoever is going to read has to basically memorize the
>entire section, 5-10 verses, pronunciation and meaning. Sometimes even
>the cantillation, which tells you how to sing the verse.

Some years ago I attended the Bar Mitzvah of one of my wife's relatives.
Karen's cousin had married a Finnish Swede named Lief Nordholm - and he looked
just like you'ld expect from the name, 6'6" or so, blond, blue eyed, rugged;
his son got his father's looks. All the young girls at the event were going
crazy over this handsome hunk.

What was so delightful was that he'd really worked on his passage, and his
Hebrew. I don't speak Hebrew myself but his recitation was very clear, fluent,
no stumbles or hesitation - much better than the rabbi's!!!

[Barry Gold]

On 5/27/2013 12:10 PM, John W. Vinson wrote:
> What was so delightful was that he'd really worked on his passage, and his
> Hebrew. I don't speak Hebrew myself but his recitation was very clear, fluent,
> no stumbles or hesitation - much better than the rabbi's!!!

Now that's impressive!