Hebrew

Lesson 3

Bet: can have two different pronunciation; if it has a dot, pronounced bet. No dot: vet (in
contemporary Hebrew there are no dots or vowel)
Niqqud: to add diacritics that were added to consonants to facilitate reading
Letters also have a numeric value.
Gimel: always “gh”. This letter might have been originally provided with a dot, only found in the
Bible. Lost a distinction between explosives and non-explosives.
Dalet: a dental; in the Bible it has a dot because of differences in pronunciation that are lost.
He: soft aspirate sound. Some people in modern Hebrew pronounce it very softly especially if they
have an Arabic background because Arabic has three different kind of aspirate sounds and they
distinguish it carefully. Almost never read at the end of the words (like aleph).
Transcribed with an h. The numerical value is 5.
Waw : semi-consonant or semi-vowel. Mainly a consonant, generally transcribed as w (sometimes v,
but not recommendable because it is used to transcribe bet when not explosive) “hook”
Zayin: sibilant phoneme, very rare. Generally appears in long words from Persian or Greek, very
similar to waw in some printed editions.
Het: second aspirate sound which might be reminiscent of Spanish aspirate sound, and it is very harsh
in order to differentiate it from the he. Do not confuse it with taw, which has a slight curl left bottom.
Each letter has a meaning, this one is probably related to the root for wheat, the storage room for grain.
Very practical lexicon for people who live in a specific society. The value is 8. Transcribed with an H
and a dot underneath, because the simple H is a very mild aspirate sound. Some people in the german
system use ch to stress the strong aspiration
Tet: transcribed in the same way as taw. It’s a dental and they are now pronounced the same, but
originally het and tet were emphatic sounds, but today there is no distinction. The dot underneath in
transcription means a strong sound, so now if you want to be careful you need to transcribe it with a T
and a dot underneath. The shape maybe comes from a potter’s wheel, and tet is the root of the word
“clay”. Our T sound closer to tet than to taw.
Iod: semi-consonant / semi-vowel; transcribed with y. Between two consonants: it’s a vowel. Between
vowels or beginning of a word: it’s a consonant.
Yad is the original word for “hand” (the same word is used for the forearm, there’s no specific word for
it)
Smallest letter of the alphabet, the very first letter that appears in the most sacred names of god, like
Tetragrammaton (yod, he, waw,he) this is the name of god that cannot be pronounced= the first
commandment given to Moses= you shall never pronounce the name of God. Because according to
ancient tradition knowing the names means having some sort of possession over those things. Probably
for this reason the Jews never wanted to reveal the original pronunciation of the name, and to this day
we still don’t know the original pronunciation.
Sacred names are also used as tools to control nature, but you have to be extremely knowledgeable or
else something terrible will happen. Among Semitic populations there is a strong belief in magic.
Kaph: transcribed with K. It also has a dot (bet, kaf, pe are still different today in pronunciation). It’s
value is 20.
It means the inner part of the hand. Mostly in contemporary Hebrew it means also “spoon”
Pronounced either K or KH.
Bet: at the beginning of a word or not preceded by a vowel.
If there’s a vowel: vet
The same happens with with k (at the beginning of a word) and Kh (at the end of a word). It has a
variant shape, final kaph (very similar to dalet, but the vertical line is longer).
In Hebrew there are five final letters.
Lamed: liquid sound, it’s value is 30. It’s root is used in ancient and contemporary Hebrew for the idea
of learning and teaching.
(Talmid= student). The original meaning that you can only find in the Bible was referred to a society a
shepherds that used a stick to guide the cattles. The stick had a sharp edge and was used to push herds
forward and influenced the shape of the letter. That’s where the concept of learning comes from.
Pushing someone to understand something.
Mem: labial sound. Comes from “maim” = water , the original shape was a sort of wave. The final
Mem has a square shape and it’s closed , so also know as “closed mem ( do not confuse with samek.
You almost never find samek at the end of a word, unless you have Greek or Persian words)
Value is 40
Nun: dental nasal sound. Very specific sound, sometimes confused with gimel. Open nun: final sound.
Mostly an Aramaic word that meant “fish”.

Three different vowel sounds a, zero sounds (in contemporary Hebrew it’s never pronounced), i.
Under the consonant you put a dot.
In the Semitic language you always start from a consonant, words are usually made of no more than 3
consonants, because at some point the final vowel was lost, so = cons + vow + cons (+ vow. Which was
lost)
Very ancient words can have only two consonants.
They borrowed the idea of Greek spiritus, so a sign to transcribe aleph with an apostrophe that does not
affect pronunciation. Wonderful device of Semitic languages to translate foreign names that translate
foreign names.
Final aleph and final he are never pronounced so never transcribed.
If you can’t tell the vowel, the safest option is to insert “e”
‘Ani= “I”, same for masculine and feminine. Personal pronouns are used every time, like in English.
Hebrew also doesn’t use the verb to be in the present. I am good = I good.
‘At= “you”, feminine
‘Ata= you, masculine.
Hi = she/ hu= masc

When yod is at the end, is usually a vowel, read i or e (usually i)

Lesson 2

Samekh: simple sibilant sound, “s”; main value is 60.

Do not confuse with final mem, they can look the same when printed. Samekh almost never found at
the end of a word, unless it’s an Indo-European language.
It means “support”, the root is related to the idea of supporting/carrying.
‘ayin: the original pronunciation was lost already in ancient Hebrew. Corresponds to aleph, glottal stop,
but sound (aleph is mute). We don’t really know how it actually sounded, but we can compare it to
Arabic which has preserved it.
You can decide not to pronounce it.
Transcribed as rough breathing ‘ ( but it doesn’t mean that it’s an aspiration)
It has to be transcribed always because it’s a consonant.
It means “eye”, the original shaped of the letter was a small eye, but in Semitic languages also means
“spring” (often used in place names, like Ain es sultan,
It’s number meant the highest possible number, 70. There a legend that says that the languages of the
world are 70, which is an infinite number.
There is also a tradition that the Torah has 70 meanings and 70 possible interpretations, so the word of
god can be interpreted in as many way sas it is possible. According to the Jewish mentality there is no
single conception of the scriptures, which might seem weird since the scriptures became the core of
their community and therefore should be sheltered from change, but it is the other way around.
But the text itself cannot be changed, and that makes it possible for people to interpret the text in as
many ways as possible.
Pe: if preceded by a vowel it is pronounced f, so always f if it’s a the beginning of a word.
“P” if preceded by a consonant or end of a word.
Final pe, result of the opening of the regular pe
The original shape of the letter was that of a small mouth, its value is 80.
Pe, kaph and bet are the explosives.
Sade: looks very similar to ayin, but more articulated. Only case of a phoneme that totally changed its
pronunciation in modern times.
The modern transcription consists in putting the dot under the S, so the pronunciation is emphatic. So
emphatic sibilant sound. Same pronunciation as Arabic.
But for some reasons some Jewish communities have kept the original sibilant sound.
According to the Roman pronunciation of this sound in the torah, the pronunciation of the sound is
simple s.
In the Spanish communities it changed into z, Sephardic pronunciation. This pronunciation is still used
nowadays among Jews.
When we come to the Bible some scholars prefer to use s, but z is the most common pronunciation and
how they pronounce out today and it is advisable to pronounce it that way ( transcribed as tz)
“Tzat” means “sight” and “rib”, the bone used to create Eve according to this tradition. Probably the
shape derived from the rib because more concrete concept.
Open tsade, final one which is like an open version of the standard one.
Qoph/quph= origin of our q, but in Hebrew it’s an emphatic velar sound (consonants reproduced by
pressing the tongue on the upper part of the palate) like tet. For a Semitic speaking person this sound is
felt very strongly, in contemporary Hebrew they don’t distinguish kap and qop.
Translated by some people with a k and dot because it’s emphatic, but it’s more proper to use q (not
followed exclusively by u like in Italian because it’s pronounced k)
In Hebrew it means “monkey”, the other meaning is the “back of the head”, it can mean both.
The value is 100.
Resh: be careful with dalet.
Transliterated with r. Linguists say that the vowels that accompany it are the same that accompany the
gluttural sounds. Originally it might have been a guttural sound.
The name of the letter comes from the Semitic word for “head”, in Hebrew its “rosh” (head).
Its value is 200.
Sin/Scin: might be a palatial sibilant sound (sc), transliteration as sh.
But also simple sibilant sound like samek.
Originally it was a totally different sound, but eventuallyLess took the pronunciation of samek (leads
to spelling mistakes).
How do I tell the difference? In most cases a rot with a consonant has two different meanings if it has
sin or scin. They were originally two different phonemes. From the Bible we learn that there were some
tribes in northern Israel that could not distinguish the two and used just one of them for everything. In
contemporary Hebrew there is no dot to differentiate the pronunciation, so the only real way to
distinguish the two is to know the word.
The name probably comes from the shape of a crescent moon, which was named “sin”, who was also a
goddess. Its value is 300.
Taw: dental sound, in the past it might have had a dot but now its no longer used.
Saw only in central Eastern Europe Jewish communities, where final taw was still pronounced as s, but
the Ashkenazi system is an exception.

In Hebrew you don’t use to be for the creation of nominal sentences.

“From” “min” it becomes m (because vowels are not written, usually you find I but if there is a guttural
sound you have e instead)
Name + from + country

Lesson 5

The vowel system.

Vowels were introduced from the 5th century of common era because after the first century, when the
temple of Jerusalem was destroyed there was nobody who could take care of the study of the Torah and
preserve it. Some priests were appointed officially to deal with it, to keep records, and immediately
after the destruction it was very clear that no such class was present anymore. So they felt the need to
create a standard version of the text.
Judaism is a phenomenon that starts when exiled from Jerusalem in Babylon were allowed to return to
Jerusalem.
Originally a sort of kingdom was created by Saul in 11/10th century of the common era. This man was
no longer favoured by the god of Israel and replaced by David. He was the ancestor of the long list of
kings destined to rule over the kingdom. Its existence is disputed. He had many wives and there were
many quarrels among his children on who was to inherit the kingdom. Solomon won and became a
great king because he followed what his father had decided but died before he could fully achieve
everything. Solomon founded a temple and used as the only shrine and sanctuary where to celebrate
rituals. It became the strategic core of the ritual activities of the people of Israel. The Jewish tradition
attributes to him the strategic idea of gathering the 12 tribes in the city and temple. According to the
Bible the result of this connection between the god and the people lead to the house being the house of
the living god. The place where the god dwells. So you have to do whatever you can to supply the
temple with everything that could be needed by the god, that also becomes a sort of physical entity.
There was a sort of overlapping between the king and god.
Then after Solomon died, his children fought and then decided to split the kingdom into two parts. The
northern is called kingdom of Israel, but Jerusalem was part of the southern part and part of the smaller
kingdom of Judea.
The capital of the northern kingdom was the Samaria. The kingdoms started fighting, and the people of
Israel started to change their customs, so they started to be more promiscuous and this led to
contamination and loss of Jewish communities. Introduction of pagan worships but we know this from
the Bible which was totally rewritten to show that the northern kingdom had behaved wrongly and judea
had done nothing wrong. After some time the kingdom of Israel was so cirrupted that it became easily
conquerable, and in 722 the Assyrian army took Samaria and the Israelian king disappeared.
The whole population of Israel was divided from 10 original tribe, a legend probably partly true, because
when the Assyrians when they conquered a population, they deported that population somewhere else
and replaced it with some sort of other population coming from a very different place. They did that to
prevent any sort of upheaval. According to the legend the 10 tribes where taken to beautiful places in
the west. According to this idea the Messiah was to bring back the tribes from any distant place. When
Western European explorers started to sail around the ocean, they discovered new countries and found
out that there were Jewish populations they thought that those people descended from the deported
people. The same happened when Columbus discovered America.
The ability of the rulers of Judea was establishing connections with the most powerful empires of the
time to be safe. So they managed to survive for centuries.
587bce: Israel became part of the Babylonian kingdom.
The king of Babylonia decided to take to Babylon the elite of the population. Once there this elite,
reorganized and created schools and kept speaking Hebrew and envisaged the idea of going back to
Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem.
Eventually they figured out 50-70 years, the Persian kings conquered Babylon and had a different mind
towards the conquered. They wanted ti give back the lands and allow them to worship their own god.
The only condition was to pay taxes to the king and that the ruling figure had to be appointed by the
Persian king.
520bc: they returned to Jerusalem
The idea is that everything had to be restored as it was. We know from the Bible that the ruler appointed
was a descendant of David, named Zerubabbel. Babbel is Babylon in Hebrew and was probably born
there. The Bible doesn’t say exactly what happened but there was probably a fight between priests and
the descendants of the royal family. Priests won and managed the king of Persia to get rid of him.
The local population, once is reintroduced, is considered to be more authentic. Progressively the ancient
culture is put aside and the new one becomes the standard one. When those exiled populations went
back to Jerusalem, they introduced a new idea of Judaism which became the strong idea. They
rearranged everything and the most important thing is that now everything should be centered around
the temple of Jerusalem. So the other temples were not acknowledged. So in order to be connected to
the other areas of Judaism, they should be sending money to the temple if they can’t visit it. The temple
became a sort of temple. This is helped by the absence of a king.
These priests introduced a lot of new ideas from Babylon, like the alphabet or a sharp distinction
between good and evil.
Then they introduced the idea of Messiah “the anointed”. They created this because they don’t want a
king, so they placed it in the future. He will take back the lost tribes from the far places of the world,
and from his kingdom there will be an end to this period of history. Then you have a period of non-
chronological history, where you will be like a god. A sort of utopian idea.

Then Alexander conquers the Persians, so including the former kingdom of Judaea. The situation
changed again because the Jewish population of Judaea started realizing that they should be committed
to something new from now on. From Alexander’s death 4 main kingdoms were formed and they
became a sort of melting pot of cultures. They let the locals keep their traditions, but on the other hand,
it was Alexander’s idea that all those people should influence each other. This model eventually became
aggressive. Your god started to take influences from other gods. Like in Egypt the god thot, in Greece
you had instead Hermes and the two became Hermes-Thot. It became something very mixed. For the
Jews, especially those who returned from Babylon, this was impossible. The rulers who seized the
power after Alexander’s death, they tried to merge it with Zeus. But their god cannot be portrayed in
statues and images. This resulted in a big clash between the rulers and the priests.
The Hellenistic rulers decided to introduce a statue a statue of Zeus in the temple in the II century. that
was the worst possible evil, they forced the Jews to worship the statue and that resulted in an upheaval
between the hortodox part of the population and the Greek, the waged war and even won. They managed
to create a legitimate kingdom, but they needed a very strong ally to survive. The very first choice was
Egypt, but realized that it was not so strong anymore. They only possible ally was Rome. They sent an
embassy and asked for alliance. The Romans were smart and didn’t ask for anything, but if they had to
intervene they will expand their authority, sent armies and enlarged their political influence. Eventually
Judaea was absorbed. They were still very clever and followed the Persian model. They appointed the
king: someone from the local Jewish families but closely tied to Rome. The problem was that these
kings said they descended from the winners of the Greeks, but became more and more romanized. This
created a split and the priests. Priests decided to act as they did before,tried to get rid of the royal family,
which was now supported by Rome so they had to look for another way to assess their powers. They
created communities of rebels who would live outside of Jerusalem and the temple was no longer the
house of god, because contaminated by the royal family.
At this point king Herod that ruled when Jesus was born. He was Jewish only from his mother side, so
not considered properly Jewish. He renovated the temple and made it huge, and it became one of the
most impressive temples in antiquity. This was the temple that Jesus saw.
So when we deal with the destruction of the temple, we refer to this one, also called the second temple.
Destroyed by the Romans to put an end to upheaval of the Jews at the hands of Titus. What survives
today is the mount of the temple and the western wall ( where Jews go to pray for the messiah to come).
What matters the most:
- One day the messiah will come
- One day the temple will be rebuilt. For now the only thing they can do is pray in small
communities untiring words that replace ancient sacrifices. Words are very powerful (“in the
beginning there was the logos”), through them you can build something that support God.

Lesson 6

In Judea you have a total split in the population between the different social classes, and attitudes
towards religion and politics.
A part of society decide to take a step away from the temple because they thought that the priests were
corrupted, so they decided to dwell in the desert and founded different sects.
They perceived themselves as more Jewish, and whatever they were doing in Jerusalem was wrong,
even the counting of time was wrong. The movement that evolves into Christianity takes a lot from
these sects (like people who live in the desert, John the Baptist who didn’t like the situation in Jerusalem.
Also Jesus who lives 40 days in the desert, there is a possibility that he might have belonged briefly to
one of these groups. For example some of them practiced a sort of baptism which was not required in
Judaism. So for some scholars John might have learned it from those groups. There was an original ida
of purity of mind and body that was very influential in the sects.
Among these sects the Christians started operating, with the difference that at some point very early
they moved out of Judaea and the Jewish territory, so they were forced to reach out to non-Jewish
people. That was a novelty because after the destruction of the temple, the main idea was to create a
group of authentic Jews.
Romans destroy the temple in 70, after that year new riots took place in the city. There was another big
war against the Romans, in the period of Hadrian who destroyed whatever he could of the army and
also of the city. He also understood that the only way to end the fighting was to destroy the city and
renamed it Aelia Capitolina, so the name of his gens and Helios, the sun. You can still see parts of the
Roman city rebuilt in Hadrian’s time. The Romans tried to alter the appearance of the city as much as
possible.
The only emperor sensitive to Jews was Julian, who gave permission to rebuild the temple. However
he only ruled 3 years and the temple was never rebuilt.
The only major change under Justinian, under Byzantines, regards the Christian places. So the temple
of Venus was turned in the Holy Sepulcher.
There were many renovations of the Roman city, nothing remains from the period before.
After the destruction of the temple in 70, some families understood that the Romans were against their
worship, they decided to dwell in the northernmost part of Israel, Galilee.
For Jews Galilee was not a favorable place, because many populations had intermarried and they
couldn’t be pure, but they had no other choice. They decided to stay there and founded academies which
became the most important centers of Jewish learning. Today’s Judaism is still rooted in the traditions
passed on by those schools.
They also understood that living in Galilee would be very dangerous for the preservation of their
language, it was called “the land of the nations” so “the land of non-Jews”.
Overtime the subsequent generation could not understand properly the teachings if they were not put
into writing. The decided to put in to writing all the traditions handed down in the temple of Jerusalem,
but they were passed down orally. Why only oral? Because writing is related to the Bible, and it’s the
only written text. You can only write something completely unrelated to it in order not to spoil it.
However they decided to write a text which became the basis of biblical understanding, the Mishnah. It
derives from the number 2, so something that is double (deuterosis in Greek) . A sort of second bible.
But also related to this idea of education, that in order to understand what the teacher tells you, you
have to repeat it.
They also needed to update it because they were living now in different conditions, many of them in
the diaspora (galùt). Today you have a modern state of Israel but still the difference of galut and herez
Israel. The latter is not fully recognized because it is granted in human politics and not god. The state
of the Messiah won’t be a political state. Many groups of Jews are fighting the state of Israel because
they think that as long as the state exists the messiah won’t come. These traditions should not be
confused with the original biblical text, called oral law, oral torah (the written one is the Bible, more
powerful and sacred, but understood through the oral one).
Then they decided that both were revealed on mount sinai to Moses.
Then been these teachings became difficult to understand because most people were speaking Aramaic
and read the Bible in Aramaic translation, to the point that they couldn’t tell te differences between the
two versions. Hebrew became a sort of dead language and Hebrew had no vowels (Aramaic is very
similar to it, but the vowels are completely different) there was a lot of confusion made. The Aramaic
Christians had translated their scriptures into Syriac, an Aramaic dialect written with a different vowels,
and took the vowels from Greeks and inserted very small signs in all those words that could be confused
and so they created a sort of vowel system. The Jewish scholars borrowed the same innovation for the
biblical text, but then understood that it didn’t make sense to use a Greek system (contamination with
the Greek culture was the source of all evil. The translation in Greek of the bible was the biggest sin of
the world.) In Judaism on one hand you’re attracted by what is external and like cultural innovations,
but then understand if they absorb those innovations, then they lose himself.
So Galilean scholars changed that vowel system and created an entirely Jewish one.
Also created a system of accents, which are also musical accents (the Gregorian chant came from the
Syrian church, who said they had adopted from Jews, who said that it was how it was read in the temple
of Jerusalem)

20/03/2023
Lesson 7

3 kinds of vowel:
A:
Those grammarians probably went into synagogues to listen to the pronunciation of vowels but those
teachers might have pronounced them differently and so they recorded 3 different a. Today the
differentiation is completely lost.
Alef + yod: the meaning of the yod is that if you don’t have the vowels, you already know that it must
be read as a woven. Which vowel? Ancient grammarians distinguished two kinds of yod, one that has
two dots which means e. There was probably a distinction they could hear between two e, but today it’s
lost.
Two dots under any consonant you can have two or three dots: e
One dot:I
And two dots on top of each other: zero, non-vowel.

Lesson 8

Waw can also be used to point out vowels: u/o. (Yod for e/i)
You can have a dot on top of waw or just a dot on top to indicate o (originally closed sound but then
the distinction was eventually lost). It’s the only case where we have a dot on top of a letter.
Small t: the same for a and o: if it is in a closed syllable, and it’s not stressed then it’s necessarily o.
This is a very rare case in Hebrew because generally in order to have this closed non-stressed syllable,
it must be at the beginning of the word. (Usually at the end you find the accent)
U: we only have two options: U+waw and U without waw.
The u is with a dot in the waw. Only in the Bible very rarely, you have three small dots on a small
diagonal line. This is very rare in contemporary Hebrew, for both kinds of u sounds, they prefer to use
the waw because they don’t write the vowels and to facilitate the reading they add more yod and waw
which are not present in Biblical Hebrew.
Hokhma: “wise”, God is said to need wisdom in the scripture. Since the name is feminine is that he
needed some sort of feminine power, which is a sort of pagan idea. So the idea is that the creation would
have not been achieved without the presence of some feminine figure. In the book of proverbs, or one
not kept in Hebrew tradition because it was passed down in Greek, “Wisdom”, there are many poetic
understanding of Hokhma as a creative assistance to god. This is a little bit confused because Judaism
is perceived as a monotheistic religion, but all these powers are part of the same god. This is probably
the result of Babylonian/Greek myth, who at a couple of gods at the beginning of the word with a holy
marriage. What happens with Christianity? It is in a way the daughter religion of Judaism, taking the
Bible from it and preserving in Greek some texts which are not preserved in Hebrew. How can they
figure out the idea of a god with a feminine side? One possibility was to involve Mary, who at the
beginning was simply a woman who conceived a son. But it wasn’t necessary that she herself had a
divine nature. But then to stress they idea that Jesus was totally divine, then his mother should have
been divine as well. How? The idea was that Jesus was conceived by Mary in an unnatural way, it was
a sort of inspiration that came down on her with an angel. There is no material link because she has a
divine nature as well. In the beginning of Christianity the chuck of Constantinople it was decided that
Mary was divine as well. ( in Greek she is metera theou/theotokos ). They tried to remove as much as
possible this feminine side of god and decided that Jesus is Hokhma.
In Constantinople they decided to build a huge church consecrated to Holy Wisdom (agìa Sofìa in
Greek) = Jesus.
In Judaic or Byzantine art you need to create art that it clearly unreal= you have to differentiate the artist
from god. They are both creators, but god creates puppets with life. In western art, especially from the
Middle Ages, they believed in art as a means of representing divine reality. The artist does its best to
pretend that when he paints a lady, she has to be as beautiful as he can, because Mary cannot be
portrayed as ugly. In Judaism there is no representation of animals or plant= creation belongs to god.
Gospel of john= at the beginning there was word, and then it became flesh. Very Jewish idea that Jesus
was created through a word.
So Hokhma is used to create a sort of hierarchy of knowledge and different disciplines. The idea that
words are the basis of wisdom is very understandable, but this idea didn’t exist in the first phase of
Judaism but only after they returned from Babylon. That means that they probably borrowed it from
somewhere else, maybe Persia or Babylonia.

Boqer: “morning”. short e in the last syllable; class of nouns which are not stressed in the last syllable.
Today it’s spelled with waw, between two consonants so it must be a vowel (o/u, in this case o).
Originally there was no waw so you had to try to guess with all sounds. So waw (o/u) and yod (i/e) are
basically a reading assistance to the modern reader.
Boqer tov: “good morning”.
Reply: you can say the same or if you want to be polite you can say “Boqer ’or(light)”. Classic Semitic
case of two nouns that should be translated by adding a preposition, in this case “of”. So it means
“morning of light”.
In contemporary Hebrew, the use of waw allows you whether to see if there is o or u.

27/03/2023

The grammarians decided to distinguish between a short pronounciation (schwa) or a mute vowel.
It’s important to remember that when you find the schwa at the beginning of a word, according to
ancient grammarians, it should have been pronounced very shortly. It has to be transliterated like an e
vowel, but you should remember not to pronounce it as a full e. Like the non-stressed e vowel in French.
If it is in any other part of the word, it is not pronounced.
There are only very specific and rare cases where it’s pronounced. In present day Hebrew pronunciation
you hardly hear the pronunciation of : even at the beginning of a word, but it’s important in
transliteration.
The simple : can either be pronounce or totally mute. Pronounced only at the beginning of a word (after
the first consonant, you can’t have a vowel at the beginning of a word).
In most cases the : is actually the result of a former full vowel (most casa e a a vowel) which was
reduced because of stress problems. There are some words that are likely to change their appearance by
adding one or two syllables at the end, and when this happens, the syllable which is furthest from these
new syllables becomes very weak.
In Hebrew, every time you have a syllable that weakens and turns to :, we change this schwa into three
final forms where you have : + guttural sounds (alef, he, het, ain and resh). When a syllable is made of
one of these signs, the guttural sound prevents the syllable from having a simple schwa.

Lilmòd: the first lamed is a preposition which corresponds to “to”. When I have an infinitive of a word
we use this preposition. “To learn” “to study”if I want to understand the meaning= look at the root. (L-
M-D) this root gives the idea “to study”.
To form the infinitive: Li-1schwa2o3.
“To write” K-T-B= Li-Kh(because it’s after vowel) (:)TOV(because it’s after a vowel) = LIKhTOV.

What if I have a guttural sound?

‘(ain) – M – D: “to stand” ( - : )
Li – ‘ (now we need a composite schwa, ain and het prefer a sound; combination of short a and :,
pronounced a) AMOD.
The fact that this syllable turns into a triggers the change of the previous vowel, with the result that
even the previous one changes into a. It’s just a phonetic cause. = LA – ‘AMOD.
’ – K – L : “to eat” = Li – ’KhOL but then there are two problems: alef is a guttural, so I’ll have hatef
segal (short e + schwa) because alef prefers e sounds.
LE – ’EKhOL

HATAFIN, plural of HATEF “to kidnap”, because it is something very quick. It indicates the vowels
which are very rapid (a, e, o) . Recognized by a small schwa before the vowel. They are pronounced
exactly the same but it makes you understand that there is a guttural in the word.

DAGESH: it means “stress”. It’s a dot, but the dots can be present in bet, kaph and pe. These three
letters are called double letters because if they have a dot, they become explosives. If not, they are
aspirates. The dagesh only appears in texts vocalized by the ancient grammarians, we don’t find that in
modern Hebrew. Originally they used the same system for the 6 explosive sounds in Hebrew (+ Gimel
– dalet – taw).
All the other letters may be provided with a dot except for guttural signs, the purpose is making them
double so doubling their pronunciation.

D – B – R = to speak = Le – DABBER
DAVAR= originally meant word in Biblical Hebrew, then came to mean fact.

I am looking for a book: ’AIN MEHAPPES/ET SEFER

28/3/2023

The Bible is a collection of books that should report the history of people.
There is a distinction between the many Christian bibles and the Jewish one. There are a different
number of books according to the different traditions.
The Hebrew bible is a collection of 24 books. 24 is the same number as the Greek poems of the Iliad
and Odyssey. Both collections were ordered by the Alexandrians after Alexander the Great.
It’s a collection of writings that contain the history of the people of Israel, with secret knowledge from
god revealed on Mount Sinai. The Bible itself describes Moses, a prophet, that climbs on a mountain in
the Sinai region (nowadays in Egypt). According to the tradition Moses received the tradition of Bible
and God told him that he should be responsible for putting this rivelation in the Bible.
In the Exodus we have a mention of an order by god to Moses according to which he should distinguish
between teachings for the whole people of Israel put into writings, and other teachings which should
only be preserved orally, which were very secret and the people were not ready for them yet. They
would need time to get used to them and will only become aware of them several centuries later.
However there are 2 conflicting issues:
➢ In the Bible there is a mention of Moses, but then at some point he dies and it’s impossible that
he was putting into writing events that happened years after his death. Maybe god revealed to
him the future, but it’s all a legend.
➢ There is also a big distinction between the fist part of the Bible (focused on Moses), and the
following one which narrates events that took place after his death. So the first part was
originally considered as the most sacred one, it was the confirmation of a very strong
relationship between the god of Israel and its people. This link was made possible because of a
prophet.

At some point the Jewish scholars decided that the number of books would be 24, but not all of them
agreed. We have to distinguish 2 traditions: the Hebrew of the books written in Hebrew, and another
tradition possibly written first in Hebrew but then very soon translated into Greek.
There was a close relationship between Judea and Egypt, where many Jewish communities spoke Greek
and adopted a Greek culture. So for them their most important text had to be translated in Greek, with
additional material that had not been fixed in the Hebrew version, which dealt with later phases of the
Jewish people after the return from Babylon. They basically had to explain why they were living in
Egypt instead of Jerusalem, but for those who lived in Jerusalem the only possibility of extension of the
history of Israel was until they returned from Babylon.
What was translated into Greek was then later recovered by the Jerusalem Jews, compared the two
versions and they decided to accept only part of the material that was used by the Greek communities
but most of it was rejected. They created two major corpora: the Greek which is bigger and the Hebrew
one which is smaller.
They rejected any hint at the Greek speaking world. They also had to understand the continuity before
and after the exile from Babylon. They decided to read the Bible they received from past generations to
the people who were living in Jerusalem, and in the last pages of the Bible we read that there was an
event during a very important festival where the whole bible was read.
The passage stresses that the Bible was divided into 3 parts:
- humash (Five Books of Moses) (H – M – Sh “five” = Pentateuch “collection of five books” )
according to them it is what Moses put into writing. This first part of the Bible is most
commonly called Torah ( the word is formed addition taw, which can be used as prefix for
creating nouns from verbs; in Hebrew an initial waw turns into yod. The root is yod – resh – he
“to throw” the metaphoric idea is that of scattering information.
Mora/morè: teachers, fem and masc. The idea of the root is that of scattering information and
then it becomes related to the idea of teaching. So the Torah can also be translated as teaching,
with a moral connotation, it gives you information on how to behave. It also sometimes
translated as “law”, but it is a teaching that influences your daily life.
Those books are full of rules, and that’s why they are so important to them. Through the
liturgical year, starting in October, you have to read the whole torah in the sinagogue. The idea
is that the Jewish year corrisponds to their most sacred text, which makes your life dependent
on the Torah and everything follows it. The whole Jewish identity is based upon it.
The first five books contain a history of the world from creation to the moment when Jews were
freed from their slavery in Egypt thanks to Moses.
Genesis: from beginning to the creation of the XII tribes. At the end we have a mention of this
event that forced Jewish people to leave Israel. From Exodus on, we have a narration of their
slavery and how they were led back to Israel. The biggest part of these books focuses on rules.
At the very end of Deuteronomy, which was most certainly added later, we read about the death
of Moses and he is not allowed to enter the land of Israel by God himself. So it will be the task
of his followers to complete his task.

- 2nd part of the Bible; Nevi’im (‫יאים‬ִ ‫( ) ְנ ִב‬-im masc plur ending “prophets”) the : is a weakling
of the original a sound (Navi is the original word)
“The eight books of the Prophets”: we have a distinction between the former prophets (the
historical books, so a continuation of the 5 Books of Moses, Joshua is the successor of
Moses to lead the people who manages to take the people into Israel. Then we have many
fights between the invaders and the local populations, so Judges have to be appointed in
the tribes. They have also the power to be commanders who wage war against the other
people. The very first period of confederation is called “period of the judges” and this is
described in the second book, “Judges” where all the judges are listed.
At the end of the book they understand they need to be more united, so they ask God for
a king. So at the beginning of the Book of Samuel, and Saul is appointed king but he sins
and replaced by David. David is a very special hero because he is very modern, terrible
kind, very strict but also very loose rulers. In this character you have all possible personality
traits.
Then he dies and his son Solomon takes over (Book of Kings), he builds the temple of
Jerusalem, very appreciated by god. As soon as he dies his two sons fight for power and
decide to split the kingdom (Israel and Judeae).
For them the history stops with the distractions of the first temple of Solomon.

- KeTUVIM < KATUV (past participle) “written”; texts that don’t really have such high
religious powers. The Psalms is a book for its own sake, a collection of poems and they
can be used for daily prayers. The book of Prpvers, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes have
been composed by Solomon according to the tradition and they are a part of a literary
 genre called “wisdom”. The content of the book is how to become wise, to worshipping
God in the right way and so on this books give you hints at how to behave. Compared to
the first books of the Bible this have been composed as much later stage so the information
provided by this books is more modern and more influenced by the Greeks. So although the
style of these books is very old because the writers pretended so, they were probably written in
the IV-V
Ruth and Ester: in the Christian tradition they are part of the historical section, but Hebrews
understood that they are very late in style and events. Ruth is the main character of the book,
she’s not Jewish but married to a Jew. Her husband dies and according to the law the widow or
man must remarry as soon as possible because it is written in the genesis. In religious societies
you need to have as many children as possible, so you need to remarry as soon as they can in
order to fulfill that. It still happens when they reach an old age. So according to the originally
Jewish law she should try to find a relatived of her dead husband, so technically you should ask
for his brother. So Ruth has to marry a relative of his husband, but there’s no relative. So she
decides to accompany her mother in law in Israel and converts to Judaism. She remarried and
has a son, which is the grandfather of king David. Interesting because this is written in a time
where it is extremely important to be entirely Jewish, king David descends from a non-Jew. So
this totally contradicts what is written in Ezra/Nehemiah, which is about the return of Jews and
makes a distinction between the pure Jews and the non-entirely Jews, who should leave Israel.
Ester is a Jewish princess who becomes queen of Persia and rescues her people from slavery.
So at this point if Israel still exists it is due to women, which is something that will change later
on as in most religions.
Book of Daniel: probably the last book ever written in the Jewish bible, probably very late and
partially in Aramaic.
Chronicles: of the king of Israel, separate stories of the kingdom of Israel and Judaea before
their end. A sort of a new version of the book of kings.
Tanakh: name of the whole Bible (abbreviation of the other three names).
According to biblical philology the most ancient parts are in the historical books and they are
in most cases poems. It is stated that in the book of judges we have the most ancient parts dated
to the X-IX century. Most of the Torah was composed before the exile, but probably revised
during and after. And most certainly the last part of the Bible was composed after. Most of it
was written between the VI-IV bc, the decided to make a collection in IIAD, after the
destruction of the second temple, when they were afraid to lose their memory and needed to
form a canon. For a philological point of view, it is strange that even in the Christian bible we
have witnesses dating to the II, so very close to the period of Jesus. On the contrary there no
witness of the Hebrew text until the IXAD. So what happened to the material over the centuries,
we didn’t know anything about the tradition. Probably the grammarians were very faithful to
what they saw, now we have archaeological evidence of previous texts of the Bible and we can
state that the work made by those grammarians was very very careful.

03/04/2023
Masorites: “masora” “tradition”, “something handed down.
Hebrew Bible= TM= Textus masoreticus.
The ancient grammarians also passed down specific accents to chant the scriptures. I they also created
two collections of readings,as called in philology.
This is important for us because we have lost all the materials that were known to them and thanks to
these collections we understand how they worked, which seems to be very accurate.
We have no surviving manuscript from that period, we can only rely on the grammarians, who lived
5/6 centuries after the biblical canon was established. So how do we know if they did a good job? We
know they collected a great number of manuscripts. So can we be sure that they handed down their own
tradition in Galilee or does it belong to the whole Jewish war? We wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for
the Qumran texts, discovered in 1947 near the Dead Sea. In the biblical times, there were small villages
where Jewish people who disliked the atmosphere of Jerusalem moved, and consacrated themselves to
the idea of purity. So they were worshipping their god in a different way, had two separate communities
(one for married people and one for those who decided not to marry) and had a different calendar and
different festivities. Even the gospels we have a mention of people leaving to stay in the desert for a
certain amount of time (like John the Baptist and Jesus).
In 1947 some Bedouin tribes were attending their flocks in the area near the Dead Sea, and according
to the legend a young shepherd lost his sheep, went to look for it and climbed some cliffs where there
were some caves. However these was a legend that it was forbidden to enter in them because they were
full of ghosts. So the boy didn’t want to enter and instead he threw a ston and heard the noise of
something made of pottery. So he went inside, saw a broken pot and saw that there were scrolls coming
out of it. He told the people of his community about his discovery, and together they found that there
were many pots with scrolls. They understood that they’re were something precious but they were
illiterate, and so they went to Jerusalem to speak to someone literate. This person advised them to sell
because they found the texts of a Jewish religious sect destroyed by the Romans around the same time
they had destroyed the temple (70 ad). The Romans probably tried to destroy every possible opposition.
What happened was that these communities living in the desert knew that the Romans would arrive,
and hid their books in caves to save their sacred scriptures knowing that nobody would go there. And
no one went there for almost 2000 years. Following expeditions discovered that almost all caves
conteined texts.
That was the first time in history that scholars had at their disposal the Hebrew bible as it would have
been read at the time of Jesus. This discovery was very significant because now we can compare the
masoretic (9th century) texts to the Qumran ones.
We can see that the masoretes did a wonderful job and the texts were very similar, however there are
different readings, especially in the last biblical books, which were written almost in the time of
Qumran. So they were probably not yet considered to be worthy of attention.
Biblia Stuttgardensia critical edition of the Bible: the most reliable available to the larger audience. It
started to be collected when the Dead Sea scrolls were not discovered yet, but today’s edition takes
them into account.
This text is organized in a very specific way, for example there are small circles upon every single word,
put by the grammarians on words that were not fully understandable. So the grammarians suggested a
possible reader, but in order to show that it was just a suggestion, they put the circles.
In the lower part of the texts: 2 collections of abbreviations, one includes all the possible comparison
with the translations of the Bible
Every single book of the Bible takes its title from the initial word.
The text of the Bible is divided into chapters and they were already present in the original division of
the text, each chapter is divided into verses. Each verse is numbered, but the numbering was introduced
by Christian scholars at the end of the Middle Ages. Jews still only refer to the chapter or the section
read in the sinagogue.
Every part of the text is called parashah, the root means “to divide” or “to interpret”. According to the
Jewish tradition the text is quoted according to “parashah”.

17/04/2023

The Liturgic calendar. Everything in the Jewish point of view relies on the Bible. God arranges the
world in a week and he starts from the first day, and even in contemporary Hebrew the first day is
Sunday (still called the first day).
The origin of the week is deeply rooted in Judaism, before their influence on the Romans and Greeks
they didn’t distinguish time in weeks. In the pagan system they didn’t have the idea of a day of rest, so
when they approached Judaism for the first time they thought that the Jews were very lazy. When god
got to the creation of man at the end of Friday, he then said he was satisfied and decided to rest to take
pleasure from his own creation. So also their god is lazy.
A religious Jew will do almost nothing on Shabbat but only study, rest and enjoy his free time which
means pray, they don’t even answer the phone.
In Judaism the days begin from the sunset, so the beginning of Shabbat is Friday sunset.
Every week one day is consacrated to rest because you act as god after finishing his creation.
Then you have festivals, which fall on specific dates calculated on the lunar cycle. In Christianity the
calendar is based on the sun.
The lunar months are shorter because this is the time that the moon spends to go around the world (28-
29 days). If you calculate time this way, there is a gap between the seasons, so they need to extend the
lunar months to 29-30 days. But there is still a gap between the lunar and solar year, they introduce an
extra month after the month corresponding to February.
This is important because each festival is related to the moon and its cycle. According to Judaism the
beginning of the lunar month is the new moon, when it is not visible from the earth. The beginning of
the month used to be a very important festival in the past. (Month – Hòdesh “new moon”)
The most important moment of the month is the full moon, when the most important festivals take place.
Like Pesah (the foundation for our Easter), celebrated almost as the same time as Easter, takes place
every year on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring (month of Nisàn, originally a
Babylonian name)

18/04/2023

Tishrì: month of september/October. The first day of tishrì (rosh hodesh) is also rosh hashshanà (“the
head of the year), “New Year’s day. There is a strong connection between the events that take place on
earth and heaven, the moon mediates between them. Its function is that mediating the power which
comes from heaven to the earth, the blessing of god is channeled by the moon to the earth, so when the
moon is visible the channeling is strong. When it is hidden, like at the beginning of the lunar month,
the blessing is still there but it is hard to understand how it can get to us. That’s why on Rosh Hodesh
you have to pray to make sure you still receive the blessing.
The idea is that since there is no temple, it is not possible to carry out sacrifices and prayers substituted
sacrifices. Sacrifices create smoke which rises, and is received by god who in turn gives back his
blessing. Prayer goes up to god like the smoke of sacrifices. The moon is called the tank of the blessings,
a sort of storage area. So it’s important to calculate how in line it is with the earth, and keep it in line
with it with prayer. God is sometimes portrayed as a gardener who creates channels to water the plants.
It can happen that the channels are interrupted and he has to find a solution.
God extends his blessing all the time, like the water which still flows. Sometimes the water is not
received, in medieval times known as the “problem of the receiver”, very common in Greece and near
east too.
On Rosh Hashshana a period of ten days starts (yamim nora’im “terrible days”) Nora= root “to be
afraid” = 10 days of awe. You feel the pressure of god on you, who judges what you have done. He is
imagined having a book with the good deeds on one page and the bad ones on the other. He compares
them and then closes the book. If you were a sinner, this is bad because this judgement won’t be
changed. In order to avoid this you need to pray and ask for forgiveness for what you have done in the
previous year. There is also a special ritual. All Jewish rites are divided between those in a sinagogue,
and then private rituals that take place at home. Men will be organizing the public life, so it’s mostly
men that go to the sinagogue. What concerns the domestic life is upon women.
In the case of rosh hashshana, in the evening the seder (“order”) takes place. It’s a dinner organized
according to a specific order, over serving has a special simbolic meaning. The names of the vegetables
for example remind of words associated with prayers. There is always a very strong symbolic meaning.
The wish you wish to everybody is a “very sweet good year.
Shofar “ram’s horn” which is used as a trumped, that gives a very grave sound, when it is blown is the
real beginning of the period of repentance. It probably a remainder of the Babylonian influence on the
Jewish communities. The rosh hashshana in Babylon was the day where the king was crowned, for Jews
it’s the first day of creation.
Yom Kippur: day of atonement, the ritual probably consisted in taking a goat and symbolically putting
on it all sins and then killed it to atone for the sins of the whole population. For the Bible there were
two greats, one sacrificed, the other one charged with the sins and abandoned in the midst of the desert
because it should die (there are demons in the desert that kill men, so instead they will kill the goat).
Probably the most important celebration in the sinagogue. At some point the shofar is played and it
marks the end of the period of repentance. Then you have the ne’ila prayer (the book of life is closed).
This day is also sad because you have to behave as if you were mourning. In the Jewish tradition you
usually wear something old and worn out to mourn, at home you should only sit on the ground and you
can’t eat or drink for 25 hours (an hour after the sunset of the following day). When the day is over
there is a very abundant dinner which has been prepared before the previous sunset. All foods are related
to mourning and death, like eggs.

Sukkot: originally related to the blessing of water from the springs in the temple, to use in lithurgies.
Related to the spreading the word of god, four days after Yom Kippur. They use a special bunch of
leaves of three different plats (palm, Myrtle, and willow) you create a sort of bouquet, shake it with
your right hand. In the left hand you should have a big lemon fruit, citrus (in the Bible is very unclear).
At the of the celebration of sukkot, the reading of the entire Torah is over. This festival lasts 8 days,
like Passover.
Mo’adim (plural of mo’ed): appointed time, longest period of holidays in Jewish time.

9/05/2023
Book of the Maccabee’s, family who reconqured the temple. They needed holy oil to light the lamb,
but all the oil had been disacrated, but in a small cave they found a small bottle which was
uncontaminated. The problem is that this oil would feed the lamp for only one day. However that oil
lasted for the whole 8 days of sukkot. So they created a new festival who would remind them of the
miracle that happen and renovation (Hanukkah in Hebrew) of the old festival. Also know as “festival
of light”, because it happens on the winter solstice, when days start to get longer. There are two major
symbols associated with this festival.
“The servant lamp”: the lamp of service to light the other ones. The responsible for lighting the lamps
are kids, who sing an ancient song about the win of the Maccabees who won against the Greek and
reinforce the idea that judaism has to survive.
- Hanukkiah used for Hanukkah; with a Dreidel (trottola) and there is different letter. It is a joyful
period.
It’s one of the two holidays that do not appear in the Torah (only mentioned in the Greek bible,
but never in the Hebrew version). The other holiday is Purim,which is celebrated on the last
full moon of the last month of winter,exactly one month before pesah. It is generally related to
flowers, spring, but the real reason behind this festival is mentioned in the book of ester. Where
this Persian king (possibly Artaxerxes) rejected one of his wives, and instead of a Persian
woman he got married to a Jewish woman, originally named hadasha?? But then changed her
name to ester (“star”). She had a very wealthy cousin, who was held in high regard, but he was
framed and accused of betrayal by a man who tried to convince the king that the whole Jewish
population of Persia has to be put to death. Queen Ester has to show up in front of the king, but
she can’t unless he summons her. After fasting for three days, she tries and is believed by him.
The bad minister is killed instead.
There were similar festivals in the west, where society was upside down. The idea is that
everybody has to experience a period of luck or evil.

Passover: pesah is mentioned in the torah, and it reminds the Jews of when Moses menaged to
rescue the people from Egypt. In exodus we read an account that says that the night before the
Jews were allowed to leave, an angel killed the first borns of Egyptians and not Jews because
they had sprinkled some lamb’s blood on their door. Related to the ritual offerings of lamb to
the temple of Jerusalem. Why on pesah you don’t eat lamb, because you no longer have a
temple where you can offer the animal, you can only place a symbol of that.

16/05/2023

Steps in the life of a Jewish person. In Italy the Jewish communities are very very small, almost
insignificant compared to Catholics. When meeting Jews in such small communities, the ones
that you meet might differ in the way they relate to Judaism. Jews relate to their traditions
through daily habits.
In foreign countries their appearence is affected: the Pentateuch: a pius jew has its face circled
by hair, why most Jews grow hair, basette and beard; they also wear the Kippa in public (even
if the tradition only prescribes them to wear it inside, but some of them cover it with a hat to go
out).
Very hortodox Jews for festivals wear fur hats to make people understand they belong to these
very old communities. The dress code is also for women, with very long dresses in dark colours.
The most distinct feature is that when they marry they have to keep their hair short and hide it
with wigs made of natural hair. Even at home they cover the front of their hair with a sort of
scarf or decoration. Fabrics should not be made by two different kind of textiles and everything
has to be natural. They have their own tailors and hairdressers (only for the most religious ones).
They usually only meet with people who have their same level of religiousness. The only
possible marriage is in a church, which is a problem because many islraeli citizens who aren’t
religious, or some want to intermarry. So they have to go to a different country (mostly Cyprus)
and then they come back and can get register officially. The state was born as a secular state,
but there was a huge opposition from religious authorities and so they opposed secular marriage.
So you have different positions towards religiosity, those who don’t believe but keep following
traditions.

When a boy is born you have to circumcise him, because in genesis Abraham is ordered to
circumcise himself as a sign of an agreement with god. They must be circumcised on the 8th
day after his birth, until that moment they don’t reveal his name because he can still be affected
by evil. There is an old tradition according to which Adam, before getting married to Eve, he
was together with Lilith, (from “Laila” “night”, so like a nocturnal she-demon). So she was the
first woman/demon, who aimed at getting other demons from this union and inducing other
men to evil. Her and Adam had many children, who had to be destroyed, but they were so evil
because demons and could only be destroyed through the power of the name of god. This Lilith
still exists and attacks boys when they are born before circumsicion.
For women there is another ritual 8th days after birth (zebet habbat “the gift of the daughter” )
in which the new girl is presented to the community and given a name. They can have both
biblical names or names outside Jewish societies. In the past they used names that could be
easily hidden.

The second step is when a boy turn 13, he is introduced to the community of adult men, when
he must be ready to read the sacred texts in a sinagogue. Well-documented with Jesus and prove
he could read the torah. Hazan teaches the boy how to pronounce the Bible correctly and how
to chant.
After that they have to prepar a sermon which is based on the reading, but it can be delivered
in the local language. On the Bar (“son” in Aramaic, in Hebrew ben ) Mizva (“commandment”).
On the day of the ceremony the kid receives from some relative his first prayer shall (tallìt ),
and he has to wear this garment every time he prays.
It’s a sort of cloak really typical of Judaism from the very beginning, the rectangular shape with
corners must be concluded with a sort of decoration called zizzìt “fringe” “hem”. It’s very
important because it shows the Jewish identity, because they are made with intertwined threads
in a way that reveals the community the man belongs to because there are different kind of
knots. Knots remind to the idea of being related to god.
Tefilìn= Aramaic name, also present in Hebrew the root is related to prayer. It’s a ceremonial
object with two leather strings twisted around your left arm. One of the edges of these strings
is tied to a small leather box which contains a small fragment of parchment with a text of the
torah. The second string goes around the head

Marriage: in Judaism the purpose of life is having children, so you should get married very
young. In religious communities they are organized by the family, by a matchmaker who
generally takes care of the religious interests of the families. The first meeting in religious and
less religious communities of the two partners, takes place under the tutorship of someone is a
public place, usually in an hotel lobby. They start talking to each other, but only about very
simple things. Then they meet again other times and fix the engagement. According to rabbinic
laws the couple is already set even if they don’t live together. The man gives a woman a ring,
which originally had a very specific shape of a house. On that occasion the groom declares that
his has chosen that woman in front of the community of Moses and Israel.
The wedding can take place in any public space. The important thing is the Huppah, made of
rectangular fabric held by four posts representing the four cardinal directions. It is the first time
they can officially stand together under the same roof.
They recite the seven blessings and the bride circles around her husband seven times.
Ketubbah : wedding contract,

Sephardic Jews= those who came from Spain or Portugal in the Middle Ages, expelled in 1492
with the edict of expulsion of the Spanish kings, and were manly welcomed in the Ottoman
Empire. They spoke a variety of Judea-spanish languages written in Hebrew but with loan
words from other languages. Sounds very much like Spanish/Latin. It is a mostly Mediterranean
world.
Until 20 years ago, they were considered a little underdeveloped or illiterate because that came
from Europe and kept in law positions. Now there is a reinstatement of their positions.

Ashkenazi Jews: originally stayed in the Rhine valley, moved west or east depending on the
political conditions. However they were expelled from the west and mainly went to east Europe.
They originally spoke German, then Yiddish. They also had a strong literature.