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Hebrew

In the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the words yom kippur shel, “the Yom Kippur of,” have referred in Israeli speech to any debacle that might have been prevented by better judgment.

Sept. 20 2023 12:01AM

Hebrew was once written in both directions. How did it fix its direction, and what does that show about the history of writing in general?

Jan. 18 2023 12:01AM

The word, like a small number of other Egyptian loanwords in the Bible, testifies to a period in which the early Israelite nation, or a part of it, was in intimate contact with Egyptian life.

Sept. 7 2022 12:01AM

The Blue-and-White party has transformed into . . . well, it’s unclear, at least in English.

Aug. 24 2022 12:01AM

The deultimization of the Hebrew language proceeds apace.

July 20 2022 12:01AM

In the end, one doesn’t know what to be struck by more: the fact that a computer can translate Hebrew at all, or the fact that when it does, it does so atrociously.

July 6 2022 12:01AM

Only in Schopfloch, as far as I know, have a large number of originally Jewish words survived in the speech of the local populace to this day.

May 11 2022 12:01AM

“An earthquake in biblical scholarship” is how the discovery has been described. That’s true, as are the connections it reveals between ancient languages and modern ones.

April 6 2022 12:01AM

And why each has been preferred in different times and places.

Oct. 20 2021 1:55AM

Quite a few masculine and feminine Hebrew words, when pluralized, take the form of the opposite gender. Why?

April 28 2021 12:01AM

As tracked through the waxing and waning value of the Hebrew words for “departees” and “descenders.”

Jan. 6 2021 12:01AM

In anti- and post-Zionist circles, the verb of choice for immigrating to Israel has been replaced by something less romantic.

Dec. 9 2020 1:17AM

The Israeli actress recently released “Gal Gadot Teaches You Hebrew Slang,” a short video from Vanity Fair. She turns out not to be such a good teacher, but it doesn’t matter much.

Nov. 5 2020 12:01AM

The two giants of Jewish literature come together for a wide-ranging discussion centered around his new book on the seminal Hebrew writers of modernity.

Sept. 10 2020 12:35AM