By Asaf Shtull-Trauring. Published 01:47 18.07.10
The Academy of the Hebrew Language has unveiled a new website aiming to offer visitors a comprehensive, user-friendly guide to the organization’s decisions on all matters related to Modern Hebrew.
Academy director Tali Ben-Yehuda said this weekend, “Our goal is to turn the site into an all-inclusive, useful and authoritative resource on [the academy's] decisions on language. In the past, if someone wanted to study the academy’s decisions they had to obtain printed material. Today he or she can look through all of its rulings on a given matter on the site, or simply type in a search word. This is something that wasn’t available to web users before because we didn’t have the proper technology.”
Decisions related to grammar and orthography have already been posted to the site, as well as a question-and-answer section and a list of frequently asked questions. Visitors can also submit questions to academy experts, and even consult with them on Hebraizing non-Hebrew first or last names.
The academy also asks visitors to contribute to the new website by sharing their own linguistic habits. According to the site, the organization “feels it is important to receive information from the general public on its linguistic habits and preferences, information that will then be incorporated into the linguistic, historical and cultural considerations that guide the academy in its decisions.”
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Tags: Hebrew
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Over the centuries, the most widely spoken language of Jews is Arabic, although few Jews speak it today, Rabbi Mark S. Glickman notes. In the past, Jews and Arabs in many lands spoke, laughed and bickered in the same tongue — as friends should.
By Rabbi Mark S. Glickman. Special to The Seattle Times
Imagine an amazing radio-device of the future — one that can reach across space-time and capture every word that every human being has ever spoken. Twist the dials just right and you can tune in to the Sermon on the Mount, or your grandparents’ first date, or a schoolroom in 15th-century Budapest. The grunts of the caveman, the delighted squeals of children at play, the whispered secrets of new lovers — they are all available on this radio. Scanning its channels creates a sound montage, an audio history of the human race.
Let’s tune into the Jewish Channel on this radio; with a device like this, you can home in on any group you’d like. Here are Moses on Mount Sinai, the joyous songs of a wedding in prewar Poland, and Albert Einstein lecturing to a group of befuddled physicists.
You hear many languages on the Jewish Channel. In ancient Israel, you hear mostly Hebrew. Later, the primary language morphs into Aramaic, and then it becomes a Babel of different tongues — Persian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and many others. These days, you can hear a lot of Hebrew again. And a lot of English, too.
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Tags: Arabic, Hebrew
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By DIANE RAVITCH. Sunday, January 18th 2009, 12:06 AM
I am deeply impressed by the philanthropy of financial whiz Michael Steinhardt, but totally baffled by the decision of the New York State Board of Regents to approve his proposal to open a publicly funded Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn.
Steinhardt has given away hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it to promote Jewish cultural institutions and Jewish identity, as well as to endow the New York University School of Education, where I am a professor.
His generosity is unquestionable. In this case, however, he is asking taxpayers to support an institution that has obvious religious overtones. In a city with a great variety of Jewish schools and other agencies that encourage Jewish identity, it makes no sense to create a public school with the same purpose.
The proposal to the Regents asserts that the school will not engage in any devotional activities. Even so, the Hebrew language is so closely aligned with the Jewish religion that it is baffling that the Regents are willing to treat the proposed charter school as a nonsectarian institution.
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Tags: Hebrew
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