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	<title>Alef: The NEXT Conversation &#187; Hebrew</title>
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		<title>What&#8217;s in a Name?</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/traditions/whats-in-a-name/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/traditions/whats-in-a-name/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:52:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Traditions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[name]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=11444</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why is the idea of legally changing our name so scary?  What's in a name after all?]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/traditions/whats-in-a-name/" title="Link to What's in a Name?"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/Ux42HX.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p><em>by Zahara Schara</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://alefnext.com/traditions/whats-in-a-name/attachment/rose_milica-sekulic/" rel="attachment wp-att-11445"><img class="alignright size-large wp-image-11445" style="margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px;" title="Rose_Milica Sekulic" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Rose_Milica-Sekulic-433x325.jpg" alt="" width="148" height="112" /></a>A rose by any other name is still as sweet…<em>yeah I don’t buy it.</em>  For as long as I can remember I never liked my name, I blame it on the fact I was not named for almost a week, <em>believe it or not I was difficult from the beginning </em>I nearly killed both my mother and myself. Then as a child I proudly declared that I was going to change my name to Zipporah, to which my father replied since I am named after him he would have to change his name to Zippy. <em>I still think this plan would work…Zippy has a nice ring to it.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So on twitter the past couple of weeks a couple of people I follow have been examining Hebrew names, for those of you who don’t know we have a first name, a middle name, a last name and sometimes a Hebrew name, <em>excessive I know. </em>It can be that your first or middle name is also your Hebrew name…it is a bit confusing but I have a point here.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Zahara is my Hebrew name, Lauren my legal name. But what does that mean? Is it simply some sort of quarter life crisis …no. When I moved to Israel <em>partly because their chronic mispronunciation of Lauren,</em> I went solely by Zahara, or Zaza for short. Here is where the important part of the story is, as Zahara I feel creative, curious and more the person I want to be. As Lauren I feel older, cautious and worrisome. <em>I don’t have multiple personalities, even though I am sure this sounds a bit crazy! I swear this isn’t like All About<br />
Eve!</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But why is the idea of actually or legally changing our name so scary to us? <em>Will we forget who we are? </em>Jacob became Israel, married women take their husbands last name, sometimes hyphenating it, <em>&#8217;cause hyphens are sexy.</em> As a way to shed the past or create a new future. Changing names is not only for mobsters hiding out in suburbia. So Hebrew name, middle name, name from a book or TV, who are you? Who would you be with a different name? Who do you want to be? I might always be Lauren on paper, but I will always be Zahara in my heart, <em>or until 2012 when my passport expires and who knows I might make it legal&#8230;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em>Zahara is a member of the NEXT Shabbat Advisory Committee &#8211; <a href="http://www.birthrightisraelnext.com/shabbat" target="_blank">to learn how to join the NEXT Shabbat movement here</a>.  You can also <a href="http://zahara3.wordpress.com" target="_blank">read more from Zahara&#8217;s blog here</a>.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ywds/" target="_blank">Milica Sekulic</a>.  </em></p>
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		<title>The Language Barrier</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/featured/the-language-barrier/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/featured/the-language-barrier/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:11:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rafi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Love Column]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tongue Tied]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=2765</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[She was a New York-bred Jew, Manhattan raised, and yet she used this language with me, all the while knowing that my foreign linguistic skills ended with the Russian I got from my family and six years of failure in high school and college Italian.

&#8220;Mi scusi, mi scusi,&#8221; I wanted to reply. &#8220;But why can&#8217;t you just speak English?&#8221;]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/featured/the-language-barrier/" title="Link to The Language Barrier"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/RHHqnd.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><em>By <a href="http://enterthekernel.blogspot.com/">Ruvym Gilman</a></em></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><em>This post originally appeared on Alef on 11-30-2009.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Dai,” she said, giving me that exasperated look I had such a knack for eliciting. But I kept at it, being playful while she tried, unsuccessfully, to wash the dishes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Dai!”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I stopped, acknowledging the little bit of Hebrew I had managed to learn from her during the course of our relationship. She was a New York-bred Jew, Manhattan raised, and yet she used this language with me, all the while knowing that my foreign linguistic skills ended with the Russian I got from my family and six years of failure in high school and college Italian.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“Mi scusi, mi scusi,” I wanted to reply. “But why can’t you just speak English?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://alefnext.com/?attachment_id=2767" rel="attachment wp-att-2767"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-2767" title="Language Barrier" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/2573762303_365ac020f8-203x203.jpg" alt="Language Barrier" width="203" height="203" /></a>We had, what you might call, a rocky relationship, the kind saturated with an on-again, off-again, up and down, yes and no sort of instability that I couldn’t totally rationalize or explain to myself. When I tried sorting through it all in my head, tried making sense of our inability to just be a normal couple, the Hebrew was one of the issues I couldn’t help but come back to. It made me feel like an outsider, someone who would never really get her because I had no way of communicating in a language she valued so highly. Add to that my sense of guilt – the constant, nagging feeling that I was less of a Jew because I didn’t know Hebrew – and you had me, disconnected from the beating heart, the life blood of my own people, disconnected from her.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When I came over her house for dinner with her family, she would sometimes absent-mindedly slip into the ancient semantics, seemingly forgetting that I was even there. As the two of us crossed Upper East Side streets, maneuvering between waddling old ladies, I would walk alongside as she had phone conversations I couldn’t understand. I wondered whether she was speaking about me, whether she was relaying some secret she didn’t want me to hear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I saw how her face lit up every time she got the chance to speak it, how once when we ran into her friend at Max Brenner’s, after an introduction I quickly found myself excluded, unable to follow them, and so I wandered off to look at the overpriced chocolate. Half an hour later, when her body language said that she was ready to go, I came back over, gave the friend a cold handshake, and walked out. We argued about it outside, about how I had left her by herself, how I made no effort to even pretend I was interested in sticking around.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“I didn’t know what the heck you guys were saying!”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I got frustrated and jumped onto the subway, feeling bad about everything as soon as I was on the train, when it was already too late to crush her in an embrace and beg forgiveness by making her laugh. When I got above-ground, I called. I tried to keep my voice low while sandwiched between people. She sighed through the receiver, little exhales of disappointment coming through as static.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“You just don’t get it, do you?” she said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There was always seemed to be something I wasn’t getting. Over the bad connection, I could feel her shaking her head at me.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I tried to be outspoken about how I felt, maybe a little more than I needed to be. But the language, it was just too much a part of her to ignore. She seemed almost incomplete without it, how could I ever fill that need?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I’d shrug.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">She’d look away.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We’d repeat it all.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Maybe the real problem was me, my insecurity, my trying to justify the finale, the ultimate conclusion of our relationship. Nothing had ever come easily for us, nothing was ever second-natured in the way I wanted or would have expected. And so I needed reasons, real, tangible things to point to, to grasp and display so that I couldn’t simply say, “oh, we just didn’t work out.” The Hebrew was an easy excuse, something that we didn’t share and which contributed to the sense that we were very different people. Maybe it was just easier to write my own ending than to have one thrust upon me.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">And then there was the sad irony, that months later, after the fact, I found myself signed up for Hebrew classes, studying to learn the same thing I never gave a chance when it might have mattered the most. I wondered at my stubbornness, my insistence at seeing the language as a contributor to our distance rather than what it could have been – an opportunity to grow closer to each other. Or perhaps it was also that same opportunity, the chance to get that closeness, which scared me enough to avoid it altogether.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/">Ed Yourdon</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><em>Graffitti Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21148821@N02/" target="_blank">Skinned Milk</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Weekly Pita 8/26/2011</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/the-weekly-pita/weekly-pita-8262011/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/the-weekly-pita/weekly-pita-8262011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:27:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Weekly Pita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Collegehumor.com]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Italian Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joan Nathan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[My Jewish Learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York Times]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Op-Ed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tablet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=10984</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This week's Pita is full with a breakdown of the terror attack in Eilat, a new clever usage for Hebrew, Italian Jewish cuisine from Joan Nathan, and some thoughts about being Jewish in Britain.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/the-weekly-pita/weekly-pita-8262011/" title="Link to Weekly Pita 8/26/2011"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/Ni0RSI.png" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p><a rel="attachment wp-att-10808" href="http://alefnext.com/weekly-pita/weekly-pita-852011/attachment/more-pita/"><img class="alignright size-large wp-image-10808" title="more pita" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/more-pita-433x325.jpg" alt="" width="66" height="50" /></a>Why a pita, you ask?  Because it&#8217;s got a little bit of everything inside.  This week we&#8217;re starting off with a little Hebrew and a couple of laughs&#8230;</p>
<p>1. <a href="http://www.myjewishlearning.com/elcms/jewniverse/amir-hebrew.shtml" target="blank">My Jewish Learning</a> brings us Jake and Amir via <a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/">CollegeHumor.com</a>.  Here, they exemplify one of many good reasons to learn Hebrew.</p>
<p><object id="ch5631367" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="450" height="254" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="data" value="http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5631367&amp;use_node_id=true&amp;fullscreen=1" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5631367&amp;use_node_id=true&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed id="ch5631367" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="254" src="http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5631367&amp;use_node_id=true&amp;fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" data="http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5631367&amp;use_node_id=true&amp;fullscreen=1"></embed></object></p>
<p>2. By now you&#8217;ve probably heard about last week&#8217;s terror attacks in Eilat.  <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/75952/embroiled/?utm_source=Tablet+Magazine+List&amp;utm_campaign=59d2a8b7bc-8_24_2011&amp;utm_medium=email" target="blank">Tablet takes a journalistic perspective on the event</a> and how it relates to the Arab Spring of 2011.</p>
<p>3. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Roger Cohen <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/cohen-jews-in-a-whisper.html?_r=1&amp;emc=tnt&amp;tntemail0=y" target="blank">writes about his own perception of veiled antisemitism in Britain</a>.</p>
<p>4. Who can resist talking about food?  Jewish and Italian cuisines are among our favorites.  This week, Joan Nathan, acclaimed Jewish food writer, combines the two as <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/76056/roman-holiday/?utm_source=Tablet+Magazine+List&amp;utm_campaign=5206e9c701-8_25_2011&amp;utm_medium=email" target="blank">she writes for Tablet about Italian Jewish foods</a> &#8211; and even shares some recipes.</p>
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		<title>The Knish Lives in Israel</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/why-i-eat-what-i-eat/the-knish-lives-in-israel/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/why-i-eat-what-i-eat/the-knish-lives-in-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:32:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Why I Eat What I Eat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haifa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Knishes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mishpoche]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=10927</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One woman's hunt for an Israeli knish.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/why-i-eat-what-i-eat/the-knish-lives-in-israel/" title="Link to The Knish Lives in Israel"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/7csWDD.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p><em>By Laura Silver</em></p>
<address class="mceTemp">
<dl id="attachment_10384" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 233px;">
<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a rel="attachment wp-att-10932" href="http://alefnext.com/why-i-eat-what-i-eat/the-knish-lives-in-israel/attachment/bourekas/"><img class="size-large wp-image-10932 " style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="bourekas" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/bourekas-433x325.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="172" /></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd" style="text-align: center;"><em>Pizza Bourekas on King George Street, Tel Aviv</em></dd>
</dl></address>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Israel, on my first visit, was teeming pitas, tomato-and-cucumber breakfasts, and fresh-squeezed Jerusalem juices (How did they pull milk from plump shriveled dates?)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">At my cousins’ house, Cohava shuttled cutlets and salads of cucumbers, beets and zucchini to the porch and introduced each dish in French, easier for me to understand than Hebrew. Her husband asked me questions about each branch of the family tree. Yiddishized words got untangled and enunciated. Family was not mishpoche, but mish- pa-CHA. Even coziness sounded gruff.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Outside the suburbs of Haifa, at Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan, I worked behind the scenes in the dining hall. The Egyptian-Jewish cook thumped smoke flavoring from industrial containers to a plastic vat of eggplant innards. More smoke flavor. More. More. Babganush, I later learned, was called <em>hatzilim</em> or eggplants in Hebrew, which sounded like <em>haloutzim</em> or pioneers. Each time I went back to Israel, the food and the people became less foreign.  I learned words for soft cheese, pastries and drinks. Café hafouch, upside down coffee, seemed to make the most sense: a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream doused in hot, black coffee.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Still, I could not find a cornerstone of my culinary upbringing. The knish seemed to be as absent from Israel as the Yiddish language. Janna Gur, editor of the Israeli food magazine <em>Al Ha Shulchan</em> (On the Table), confirmed some of my suspicions in an email:</p>
<table width="300" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>“Indeed knishes are quite rare here. Your best bet would be Bney Berak and Mea Shearim Quarter in Jerusalem, time capsules of the Eastern European Shtetl. There are quite a few delis that sell Ashkenazi classics, including knishes.”</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify;">On a trip to Warsaw I found a through line to the Israeli knish. At the Singer Festival for Jewish Culture, I sat next to a Polish-born Israeli woman who told me her aunt had played the Yiddish theater in Poland and later baked knishes in Tel Aviv.</p>
<address class="mceTemp">
<dl id="attachment_10384" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 260px;" "margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;">
<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a rel="attachment wp-att-10933" href="http://alefnext.com/why-i-eat-what-i-eat/the-knish-lives-in-israel/attachment/cafe-batya/"><img class="size-large wp-image-10933" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="cafe batya" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cafe-batya-433x325.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="187" /></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd" style="text-align: center;"><em><a href="http://www.2eat.co.il/eng/batya/" target="blank">Cafe Batya</a> predates the state of Israel</em></dd>
</dl></address>
<p>Bella Sherman, now 87, arrived in Israel in 1948, and started working at Café Batya, an Ashkenazi-style restaurant that predated the founding of the Jewish state. She remembered that Batya’s husband hid Haganah weapons inside the cauldrons in the kitchen. Bella worked there for seven and a half years and remembered the recipe:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">“The dough has to be elastic, if the flour is too dry, you add some water to it,” she told me. “You knead the dough, make it as thin as a table-cloth, that&#8217;s what we call it too, &#8220;a table cloth of dough&#8221; (<em>mapat batzek</em> in Hebrew) then you put the meat, not at the center but all around, then use a glass to press around it&#8230; the size depends on what you fill it with.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Guidelines and traditions that gave way to improvisation. And so my relationship with Israel: different forms, shapes, aftertastes and emotions that run the gamut from hot to cold to lukewarm. But, always, a gut feeling.</p>
<p><em>Share <a href="http://knish.me/share-your-story/" target="_blank">YOUR knish story</a> and join the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/internationalknishsociety" target="_blank">International Knish Society</a> for knish news and contests.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Photos provided by the author.</em></p>
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		<title>So…I confuse you</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/diverse-jews/so%e2%80%a6i-confuse-you/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/diverse-jews/so%e2%80%a6i-confuse-you/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:10:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Diverse Jews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diverse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poem]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=9194</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yael’s poem originated from the national tour of I.D., a stage show of monologues by Birthright alumni exploring Jewish culture and identity.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/diverse-jews/so%e2%80%a6i-confuse-you/" title="Link to So…I confuse you"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/rRD0hY.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p><em>By Yael Miriam </em></p>
<p>So I talk too black with a Jewish inflection<br />
I wear pink Timbs with a Star of David around my neck<br />
I do the hora to Rihanna<br />
and “Hatikva” on my conga<br />
and yes my hair is braided<br />
but it’s covered by my kippah</p>
<p><a rel="attachment wp-att-9197" href="http://alefnext.com/diverse-jews/so%e2%80%a6i-confuse-you/attachment/star_rosino/"><img class="alignright size-large wp-image-9197" title="star_rosino" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/star_rosino-325x325.jpg" alt="" width="254" height="254" /></a>I tell you my name is Hebrew<br />
but what you hear is exotic<br />
You see my features are Jewish<br />
tanner skin, must be Hispanic<br />
kinda cute<br />
kinda hood<br />
and religious&#8230;</p>
<p>I confuse you</p>
<p>See my clique is black chicas<br />
clubbin’ to hip-hop music<br />
bangin’ out step routines<br />
sittin’ on the stoop drinkin’ forties<br />
watchin’ men play dominoes<br />
talkin’ ‘bout someone’s cousin’s cousin’s sister’s friend just had a baby</p>
<p>Mazel Tov!<br />
oh, congratulations&#8230;.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, I confuse you</p>
<p>I know, I should be in a sorority in the Midwest<br />
pre-law or psychology<br />
going to Bloomie’s<br />
with my sisters, straightened hair,<br />
dressed in Juicy&#8230;</p>
<p>Yeah, perhaps this is a stereotype,<br />
and perhaps I still confuse you</p>
<p>See I’m a bitch cuz I’m bold<br />
I’m ghetto cuz I speak my mind<br />
I’m hood cuz I don’t take bullshit<br />
It must be cuz i kick it with black girls, right?<br />
(Does she know she’s Jewish?)</p>
<p>Don’t condescend to me<br />
to minimize your confusion<br />
and disillusionment<br />
with who you think I am<br />
or should be<br />
this Jewish-black “wanna be”</p>
<p>Have you ever met an Israeli?</p>
<p>Baby, don’t let me confuse you<br />
Don’t let me confuse you.</p>
<p>educated<br />
religious women<br />
shooting guns<br />
dodging bullets<br />
chanting Torah<br />
standing strong<br />
club dancing<br />
booty shaking<br />
soul searching<br />
tradition practicing<br />
loud<br />
bold<br />
aggressive<br />
kind<br />
beautiful women that are my people.</p>
<p>Have you met them?<br />
Have you met me?</p>
<p>And again, I confuse you</p>
<p>See, I’m too Jewish for the black girls<br />
and too black for the Jews<br />
So I ride the train<br />
back and forth between 125th and Westchester<br />
Hoping there will be a conductor to tell me where to get off<br />
where I’m supposed to reside</p>
<p>But instead, I decide<br />
to take it all the way to JFK<br />
El Al straight to Israel.</p>
<p><em>Yael Miriam holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has performed in such productions as The Libation Bearers, For Colored Girls&#8230;, Dreams in Scar Space, Polaroid Stories, Voices of Africa, and Peter. She is currently a member of Hemispheric’s EmergeNYC Program for emerging activist artists and Storahtelling Theater Co. Yael’s poem originated from the national tour of I.D., a stage show of monologues by Birthright alumni exploring Jewish culture and identity. When not performing, she works hard, daydreams, travels, goes to Israel as often as possible, and plays with her friends. She is currently working on an empowerment education program and living in a castle in Brooklyn.<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosino/" target="_blank">Rosino</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.<br />
</em></p>
<p><em>&#8230;</em></p>
<p><em>**</em>This poem  appears in <a href="http://nextbookpress.com/books/487/" target="_blank">What We Brought Back: Jewish Life After Birthright</a>,   a new  anthology written by Birthright alumni, and published by The   Toby Press  in conjunction with Birthright Israel NEXT and Nextbook Inc.</p>
<p><strong><a href="../featured/16-diverse-jews/" target="_self">Read more posts from issue #16: Diverse Jews.</a></strong></p>
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		<title>This Little Light of Mine</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/couples/this-little-light-of-mine/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/couples/this-little-light-of-mine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:00:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[couples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[single]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=8776</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When I was 28, I packed up my entire life and moved around the world to be in Israel with the Israeli boyfriend I’d met two years prior.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/couples/this-little-light-of-mine/" title="Link to This Little Light of Mine"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/rB0kbW.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p style="text-align: center;"><em>&#8220;There is a difference between getting a partner and attracting a partner.<br />
Getting implies that our hooks work; attracting means that<br />
our light is bright and appears like a beacon to one who is meant to see it.&#8221;</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">-Marianne Williamson</p>
<p><em> By Shara <em>Grifenhagen</em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-8779" href="http://alefnext.com/couples/this-little-light-of-mine/attachment/flame_magda-sobkowiak/"><img class="alignleft size-large wp-image-8779" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="flame_Magda Sobkowiak" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/flame_Magda-Sobkowiak-216x325.jpg" alt="" width="167" height="250" /></a>When I was 28, I packed up my entire life and moved around the world to be in Israel with the Israeli boyfriend I’d met two years prior. I got to Israel with three suitcases and a dream, and quickly lost myself, as was to be expected (in hindsight). I mean, I moved around the world…of course it was going to take some getting used to. I don’t know why I expected to just show up and be myself. There’s a new culture and a new identity to assume. Sadly, with all these changes, my inner light began to flicker and fade, and I focused so much energy on keeping this guy happy because I could not…under any circumstances…end up alone in a foreign country.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I found myself losing a little more of that inner light each day in order to be the most perfect girlfriend ever. I was convinced that it was him…or nothing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So you can imagine how devastated I was when that relationship ended. Twice, in fact. We did the break up, get back together and break up thing. And every time we broke up and got back together, my inner light dimmed until it was so dull that I then entered the most volatile and dramatic relationship of my life…a 2-year relationship which I dragged out for about 2 years longer than I should have.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Better to pretend to be someone else than to be alone, right?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Better to pretend I was ok with his questionable fidelity and his dramatic mood swings, than to attend another wedding or another party without a date. Yes, I was officially in darkness at this point.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">My hooks certainly worked. I got his attention…but did I really want it?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I feel like we, as women, spend many of our formative years worrying about getting the guy. We lower our necklines and make our skirts shorter. And sadly, we often find ourselves competing with every other girl in the room to get “that guy.” And then when we get him…we do whatever it takes to keep him. Even if it means losing a bit of ourselves.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I mean…let’s be honest. How many of us have been in a relationship where we were so scared that the partner may ditch us and we’d end up alone that we did whatever it took to keep him interested? We went to that stupid emo rock concert and pretended it was the best time ever. We helped him polish his skateboard or arrange that old stamp collection. We encouraged his singing or told him that his disgusting, lumpy chicken pot pie was the best. We were REALLY REALLY interested.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Better to pretend a little bit so this dude likes us more, right? I mean…better to be a little bored (or even boring), than to be alone.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Oh how very very wrong.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When I finally got the courage to end that crazy, unstable relationship and move on, I spent the next few months finally working on myself. I was now 32 years old and had been living in Israel for more than four years. I had to get back to my roots…rediscover the person I’d abandoned when I got off that airplane at Ben Gurion…the woman I was scared I’d buried so deep in my soul that she’d never see the light of day again.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I finally worked on my Hebrew so I could better express myself out in public. I signed up for a photography class since I hadn’t picked up my camera since university…when I was still developing prints in a darkroom. I enrolled in a creative writing class…to challenge me and help me get some of my stories on paper. I was searching for myself…looking for the girl I once was…and hoping that in the process, my inner light would start to shine again.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, I began to find that inner self. With every day that I dedicated more time to myself, to reading, to writing, to taking pictures, to just having a bottle of wine with my girlfriends, I felt my light start to shine a little brighter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I was alone and I was content and I knew I was going to be ok. I knew that my happiness wasn’t dependant on any man, but on myself. I knew that if I couldn’t love myself and let myself be loved exactly the way I am…it was never going to work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Somehow, women have been socialized to believe that in order to find a mate, we must quiet down. We should learn how to cook and love to clean. We should want a career and never…never talk about wanting babies. We’re told that no man will like a woman with opinions that are too loud…and that being the cute girl perched on the end of the bar silently sipping her cosmo while some guy admires her cleavage, is more important than speaking up and being heard.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What we SHOULD be told instead, is that the only voice we need to hear is our own, really. And we should be exactly who we are… when our inner light shines bright enough, he will find us. And we’ll be in a place where we’ll want to be found.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">&#8230;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Shara Grifenhagen made aliyah with Nefesh b’Nefesh in July, 2005. She grew up in North Carolina and earned her undergraduate degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Since moving to Israel, she has earned an International MBA at Bar Ilan University and now makes creative marketing videos for companies around the world.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/magdaes/" target="_blank">Magda Sobkowiak</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em></em><em><a href="../couples/couples/couples/couples/couples/featured/22-couples/" target="_self">Read more posts from Issue #22: Couples.</a></em></p>
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		<title>Outside the Walls</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/places-and-spaces/outside-the-walls/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/places-and-spaces/outside-the-walls/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:19:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Places and Spaces]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judaism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[philly]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=8516</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I prefer to be caught off-guard by Judaism – to discover it in places where it really ought not to be.....]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/places-and-spaces/outside-the-walls/" title="Link to Outside the Walls"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/vwNdJG.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p style="text-align: justify;"><em>By Danielle Selber</em></p>
<p><a rel="attachment wp-att-8518" href="http://alefnext.com/places-and-spaces/outside-the-walls/attachment/78311146_2777163b8c/"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-8518" title="Cafe" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/78311146_2777163b8c-203x203.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="203" /></a>Here’s a pop quiz: where, according to traditional Judaism, is the center of Jewish life today? The answer is: the home. Traditional Judaism sees the home as our “temple”, the heart of our personal Jewish experience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But most people’s first instinct would be to guess the synagogue. A synagogue is by definition a place where Jews congregate to meet and worship. In places where Jewish life is prevalent today, you will often hear a which-came-first, the-synagogue-or-the-community debate, because synagogues become so integral to communities that it becomes difficult to parse out one’s influence on the other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But to assume that a synagogue must be the central place of meeting is to forget something important about Judaism. A religion of the exiled and the expelled, Judaism puts virtually no emphasis on place or space. Right in the Torah, G-d destined us to be a wandering people, a people “scattered among the nations”. Our place is no place.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With this in mind, it makes sense why my Jewish life has unfolded far outside the walls of synagogues. Though I consider myself relatively religious – keeping Shabbat and kosher – I’ve never felt comfortable in a formal Jewish setting. Synagogues make me feel stifled, insecure, judged. It’s hard to feel open to spiritual or personal connections when you have one eye on the clock. I prefer to be caught off guard by Judaism – to discover it in places where it really ought not to be.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One such place exists in my hometown of Philadelphia. Nestled caddy-corner to one of those quaint little alleyways that Old City is famous for is a hole-in-the-wall called Café Ole. It’s the kind of place your eyes would slide right by if you didn’t know you were looking for it. Israeli owned and operated, Café Ole’s speakers play an endless Israeli playlist and it remains the only place in Philly to score a “café hafuch” coffee. Hebrew vocabulary is scrawled on a blackboard by the Israeli servers, who will ignore you for minutes at a time while you wait to order and then suddenly ask how your mother is doing. A handwritten sign hung next to bejeweled chamsas declares in Hebrew “this place is not kosher”. There was a time when I was working from the café that my cell phone rang and I answered in Hebrew, simply forgetting that I was in America. Israelis and Americans who have visited Israel have reported feeling that same connection in Café Ole, a feeling of transport and comfort. But though it’s a definitively Israeli place, there is nothing conventionally Jewish about Café Ole. Their food is not kosher, they are not closed for Shabbat or the Jewish holidays, and most of the clientele are not Jewish.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">When I worked for Birthright Israel NEXT in Philadelphia, we asked the owners if we could take over the café after hours once a month. To our surprise, “Israeli Café Night” became our most popular event by far. It drew a completely different crowd than any of our other events, and with no publicity outside of a Facebook invitation, the attendance at the Café Ole nights doubled and sometimes tripled every month. In a city where happy hours and bar crawls prevail, this was a truly surprising development. What drew such crowds to a simple little café on the edge of the city?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Our one-night-a-month simple premise was this: come here, drink coffee, meet Jews. Not being in a bar made the event intimate yet pressure-free; not being in a synagogue made it unassuming and decidedly unreligious. It was an evening without pretense, with easy laughter and casual conversations in any combination of English, Russian and Hebrew. Our crowds spilled out onto the sidewalk, with girls arranging their skirts so they could sit on a neighboring stoop and people dragging chairs from inside to join in on a particularly interesting conversation. The night was always slated to end at 9pm, but people frequently stayed around until midnight. Someone came up to me at the end of one night and said, “you know, something special happened here tonight”, and I knew just what he meant.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Our Israeli Café Night was held in a place that just happened to be Jewish, instead of being in a Jewish place, and that made all the difference. People came to Israeli Café Nights and connected, not necessarily to Judaism, but to the idea of a Jewish community. A brand new concept for many, this connection didn’t so much open doors as tear them off their hinges. The same people we couldn’t pay to come to our events before began to become more involved in our community, becoming advocates and leaders and bringing their friends along with them. When Judaism exists outside conventional walls, its’ reach is greater, its’ appeal more accessible. Something special happens.</p>
<p><a href="../places-and-spaces/featured/21-places-and-spaces/">Read more posts from Issue 21: Places and Spaces. </a></p>
<p><em>Photo by  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/" target="_blank">austinevan</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>. </em></p>
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		<title>The Earth is Not Quiet</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/israel/the-earth-is-not-quiet/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/israel/the-earth-is-not-quiet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:17:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shabbat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yiddish]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=8135</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No place but a sidewalk crack, a bridge across water, the oily death of a crooked coast... ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="http://alefnext.com/israel/the-earth-is-not-quiet/" title="Link to The Earth is Not Quiet"><img class="wppt_float_left" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-post-thumbnail/JOQswS.jpg" alt="" title="" width="203" height="203" /></a><p><em>By Laura Jo Hess</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-8141" href="http://alefnext.com/israel/the-earth-is-not-quiet/attachment/tel-aviv_acroll/"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-8141" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="tel aviv_acroll" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tel-aviv_acroll-203x203.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="203" /></a>No place but a sidewalk crack, a bridge across water, the oily death of a crooked coast. Here, you sip tea on a balcony made of wood, spit tears from a hotel roof, jut eyes across a dimmed room. Hammocks are slung between bedposts, blankets pile high on the floor, shadows take the shape of a sailboat. If you try hard, you can recall the angles of the woman in the marketplace and the hue of her orange skin. You can locate love in the zee of two bodies clasped together at a bedside or a coffee shop. All you need to know is this smeared window and the existence of plastic tables and telephone poles. Take your feet and place them down—learn the loose alleyways and etch your face on the tavern wall as you turn to leave.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What life there is, is remembered on the balcony of a soon-to-be vacant room. Shirtless boys with tanned skin bend at the hips and knees; girls in shoes walk like birds to the local bar, kiss gloss to the side of glass and make you remember their scents. I, in canvas shoes, just learned how to breathe. I, an animal, forgot you when the air came through. How must the cracks in the desert hide jewels, a scroll of history, bedposts of old lovers. How must soldiers hold metal in clasped hands and recall, broken, the face of their best friends, their brothers, shema over the arch of a bomb. A man wipes the skin beneath his eyes and his teeth shine as he speaks—I can’t hear the words but his lip movements are inevitable. I can’t see his hands but later they place stones on a grave flat and secure. Later, his chest heaves and his gun sags with the weight of his tears.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But how could this be in a place that just began? Let us recall a boy in shirtsleeves and a tie clip, ten years old, studying letters in black ink, shapes that start with lines and end in squares: moments you mustn’t trust until spoken. Climb aboard, his father says, yelp these words from rooftops havens and hammock beds. Place sounds in wood petrified to stone, in the stratified parallels of doorways, the limestone fibers of a place you claim to love. If you want language, he boasts, learn to love a foreigner. If you want history, memorize these words, tattoo them on the inner side of your wrists; remember them once I’m gone. When addressed in Yiddish, respond in Hebrew. When wide-eyed boys throw stones in your direction, throw back in Hebrew. If you want food, shiny shoes, or a slice of bread, use only Hebrew words.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A hundred and fifty years later, a street moans in language: lamps sway and sound emits from the crown of the head, light from the back of the throat. What you know is limited to distance and boiling points, minutes of mediocrity. Amid a circle, find swans dancing limbs across the radii, blonde arms flailing and torsos aghast, static becoming motion momentarily. Let me explain you the drummers with tanned skin and definition, a shofar in hands callused, lips pursed red. But at a beach in the afternoon, a light splits the air in thirds and a white horse prepares for a ceremony, human legs sturdy on either side of its tough and furless hide. I heave my body upon sand, haul breaths from my open center, pause for heat to gather on my chin, my toes. I suppose it took such a contrast of color to make me weep.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">At synagogue, a woman with thick stockings and a wig leads my finger along Hebrew words. She picks the lint from my skirt and covers my calves with fabric. You come to my house, she whispers, you eat Shabbat. If Israel is a moment, then put me in a café with a wooden deck and chairs with straight backs, a cue. Give me a real hand on a real thigh, an instant of smoke billowing from the lungs. If Israel is a day, then sit me on a bench at Jaffa with jagged coastlines and flags folded over in wind. For now, Israel must be larger—sand surrendered in the fiber of a pant leg, a graveyard set at dawn.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/commensa/" target="_blank">acroll</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a rel="attachment wp-att-8136" href="http://alefnext.com/israel/the-earth-is-not-quiet/attachment/laura-jo/"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-8136 alignleft" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="Laura Jo" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Laura-Jo-203x203.jpg" alt="" width="75" height="75" /></a></em></p>
<p><em>Laura Jo Hess is a midwesterner living in Brooklyn. She is attending The New School in the fall.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="http://alefnext.com/featured/19-israel/" target="_self"><strong>Read more posts from Issue #19: Israel.</strong></a><br />
</em></p>
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		<title>Israeli Slang for V-Day</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/the-love-issue/israeli-slang-for-v-day/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/the-love-issue/israeli-slang-for-v-day/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:44:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Love Issue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli slang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tu B'Av]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=4071</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With a wink and a nudge, we invite you to take a page from the little black book of our resident Israeli, and pick up some Hebrew slang for Valentines Day.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Tu B&#8217;Av is the Jewish version of Valentines Day.Â  Although it&#8217;s still months away, we wanted to give you the in with our resident Israeli (i.e. smooth, suave), Yishai.Â  Take notes as he shares some tips on how to woo your mate.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="400" height="300" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5940576&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="300" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5940576&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object> <a href="http://vimeo.com/5940576"></p>
<p><em>Israeli Slang 101 &#8211; &#8220;Shalom, Mahmi&#8221;</em></a><em> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user2105714">Birthright Israel NEXT</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.<br />Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/naama/" target="_blank">naama</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Hebrew for Hanukkah</title>
		<link>http://alefnext.com/tongue-tied/hebrew-for-hanukkah/</link>
		<comments>http://alefnext.com/tongue-tied/hebrew-for-hanukkah/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:23:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rafi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tongue Tied]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hanukkah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hebrew]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://alefnext.com/?p=3080</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With our third issue, "Tongue Tied", winding down, and and Hanukkah just around the corner,  many of you may be wondering why we at Alef chose this time to focus on language, and in particular- Hebrew.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>By Adam Oded and Rafi Samuels-Schwartz</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With our third issue, &#8220;<a href="http://alefnext.com/featured/03-tongue-tied/" target="_blank">Tongue Tied</a>,&#8221; winding down, and Hanukkah just around the corner,Â  many of you may be wondering why we at <em>Alef</em> chose this time to focus on language, and in particular, Hebrew.Â  Well, believe it or not there <em>is </em>a method to our madness; this confluence of Hebrew and Hanukkah was not simply a random coincidence of scheduling.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But first, some brief history:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">About 2200 years ago, our ancestors faced an attack on their religious practices.Â  The<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire" target="_blank"> Seleucid Syrian Greeks</a> under the rule of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes" target="_blank">Antiochus IV Epiphanes</a>, banned Shabbat observance, circumcision, and Torah study.Â  In public ceremonies they attempted to make respected members of Jewish communities eat <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_animals#Judaism" target="_blank">forbidden foods</a>.Â  Antiochus&#8217; efforts were aimed at attacking the things that made Jews different from the rest of the Greek-speaking world.Â  Some Jews, like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean" target="_blank">Hasmonean</a> family (sometimes called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabees" target="_blank">Maccabees</a>), rose up against these decrees and fought back.Â  The Jewish victory over the Syrian Greeks represented the triumph of Jewish identity over forced assimilation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A little over 100 years ago, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Modern_Hebrew" target="_blank">Hebrew language</a> was resuscitated into a living language after being relegated to ritual use for nearly 1800 years.Â Â  Today, Hebrew is spoken not only in Israel but in Jewish communities around the world.Â  Outside the Untied States, Hebrew has supplanted Yiddish as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca" target="_blank"><em>Lingua franca</em></a> of the Jewish People, enabling French Jews to talk to Russian Jews to talk to Brazilian Jews,to talk to South African Jews.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a rel="attachment wp-att-3124" href="http://alefnext.com/tonguetied/hebrew-for-hanukkah/attachment/dreidel-2/"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-3124" title="Dreidel" src="http://alefnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Dreidel-203x203.jpg" alt="Dreidel" width="203" height="203" /></a>The connection between Hebrew and Hanukkah, while not immediately obvious at first, is still striking.Â  Without the cultural victory (to say nothing of the military one) of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks, Hebrew would be dead.Â  Not, to quote <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GrYNaaYSjs" target="_blank">Miracle Max from <em>The Princess Bride</em></a>, &#8220;mostly dead,&#8221; but entirely, and totally finished, and the last two weeks on <em>Alef </em>would have featured stories about learning Greek.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">So, as <em>Alef</em> moves into Issue #4, &#8220;The Holiday Season,&#8221;Â  we wish you all a Happy Hanukkah, and a Chag Urim Sameach.Â  And, no matter what language you speak, go easy on the latkes, folks!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Image provided by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfajardo/" target="_blank">mfajardo</a>, licensed under<a href="http://creativecommons.org"> Creative Commons</a>.</em></p>
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