Days of Awe

Transliteration—the bane of an editor's life: I am a bat. Warm of blood and weak of eye, I flit between two worlds—Sabra and Anglo. I am immersed in the cultures, sights, sounds, and flavors of this place, but when I flit back over to the Anglo side to try to tell you about it, I run headlong into a huge problem: linguistics. Do I translate a term literally or figuratively? Or do I just use the Hebrew term? And, if so, how will you know how to pronounce it? Hebrew words cannot be written with English letters. Yes, we try, and this blog is guilty of many of the more bizarre attempts at transliteration (the representation of a word from one language into a different character set). But the truth is that the sounds of Hebrew are not the sounds of English, and therefore cannot be represented with a Latin script. How do I indicate the chet sound, that gutteral throat-clearing of a consonant so prevalent in Hebrew? How do I replicate vowel sounds alien to English, or place stress on the correct syllable? A friend once told us of visitors from Argentina who saw the transliteration on the exit sign for haHalacha (ha hala CHA) and read it as haha LACHa (as in Cucaracha). The story may be apocryphal, but it still cracks me up and confuses the hell out of Gill.

Another case in point: American Jews have long called these approaching days the High Holidays, while the Hebrew is really closer to "days of awe" or "awesome days" (as in awe-inspiring, not, "Dude! Awesome nipple ring!"). What makes it more difficult is that the Hebrew word for awesome is the same as terrible. So what do we call it? If you're sitting next to someone holding a chubby-cheeked infant, does it become Days of Awww? With our beit knesset's metal chairs, Days of Ow seems more appropriate. And high holidays doesn't come close to encompassing the whole avalanche of events: s'lichot, rosh hashana, tzom gedalia, yom kippur, sukkot, shmini atzeret, and simchat torah. Some are one day, some are two days, and some last a week. It is a marathon.

And holidays sounds so white bread. Holiday sounds polite and British and, to be quite honest, Christian. We don't have holidays. We have haggim. There's that chet sound at the beginning and the stress on the second syllable... cha GEEM. Our festivals, our days of observance, whatever. Hag s'meach (happy fill-in-the-blank holiday) is a generic greeting for any event, though there are special things we say at special times. From now until rosh hashana, we also say shana tova (wishing someone a good year); between rosh hashana and yom kippur we say g'mar hatima tova (roughly, may you be inscribed favorably). And so it goes...

It is traditional to wear white on yom kippur. Yesterday, while running errands, I duck into one of the shlocky discount stores and find an el-cheapo white skirt and shirt. The store is well stocked with tons of stuff in white, and the whole transaction is symbolic of the multicultural nature of the galil (Galilee), where almost 50% of the population are Israeli Arabs. This particular store is owned and run by Arabs; most of the clientelle are Christian Arabs. The people working there all speak fluent Hebrew. While paying for my purchases I almost on reflex say, "Shana tova." But I remember all those years in the States when I would grit my teeth at being wished "Merry Christmas," and I think, it isn't her new year. So I use the generic "hag s'meach," and head on my way. In the 30 seconds that it takes to walk from that store to the drugstore, I hear Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish. My town. Diverse, laid-back, and usually friendly.

In keeping with the spirit of the haggim, OFL (Our Fearless Leader) asks us to write personal mission statements. For those of you who have somehow escaped corporate culture, a mission statement is a company's raison d’être expressed in a single sentence. However, since the marketing suits have their fingerprints all over it, the mission statement always comes out sounding like meaningless hype and drivel. (After all, few companies want to admit that, "We exist to make as much profit as humanly possible.") Unfortunately, OFL bans us from using Dilbert's Mission Statement Generator, which always guarantees an easy A for any MBA class.

Another tradition over the haggim is to make donations to charity. Yes, we should do it all year, but especially now. If you are looking for a few creative ideas, you can show your appreciation to an IDF soldier by sending a pizza or other treats. Those of you of the Atkins persuasion can skip the carbs and help needy families at tzalachat m'le'ah (Full Plate), where the emphasis is on replacing missing protein. If, on the other hand, you wish to protect the protein, I can strongly recommend Chai, an animal welfare society that does amazing work here.

One more tradition—asking forgiveness of those we may have injured in the past year. (Nadine, taking you to the vet for your own good does not count, so forget about it!) So, if I have unknowingly offended, insulted, annoyed, irritated, aggrevated, or otherwise injured any of you, I am truly sorry. Of course, if I did it on purpose, all bets are off.

Same old, same old: Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise and no one seems to be paying much attention. Hat tip to reader LS from the mercaz.

One night in Bagkok: Stratfor reports:

The Thai military moved tanks around government headquarters in Bangkok the evening of Sept. 19 as part of an apparent army coup. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is in New York, and he will not be able to return until some sort of compromise has been made. Thaksin tried to make a statement on television regarding a state of emergency, but the programming was interrrupted to show pictures of Thai royalty while songs associated with former military coups played in the background.

Local news carries live feeds from Israeli tourists who report that all is quiet and there is no sign of any trouble at all. Thailand is such a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists that a young Thai guide once asked an Israeli, "How many Israelis are there?" "About 5.5 million," replied the tourist. "No, I don't mean in Thailand," explained the guide...

The launch of a new NPO: A new bright light in galaxy of media watchdog groups is Second Draft. Be sure to check out their site, read about who they are, and what they are trying to accomplish. If you're familiar with Honest Reporting, you'll want to check out Second Draft, the brainchild project of Boston University history professor Richard Landes and visiting scholar Pedro Zúquete of Portugal. While the initial work related to anti-Israel propaganda, Second Draft's goal is to ensure better media fairness and accuracy on all issues.