Sakal
🧠 VOCABULARY UPLOAD: Sakal (Hebrew): Often translated as "success," but more accurately means "prudent, circumspect, wise insight." It is the opposite of "Hustle." Hustle is blind speed. Sakal is looking at the map, understanding the terrain, and taking the right step, not just the fast one.
Though now in the deepest of his life’s trenches, God is still with Joseph (Genesis 39:21). His fellow inmates, Pharaoh’s former butler and his former baker, both dream symbolic dreams, and Joseph’s skills as a dream-interpreter are put to use. He predicts that the butler will be exonerated in three days and restored to Pharaoh’s service, and that the baker will be put to death. Joseph’s interpretations come true.
The fate of Joseph, in the Hebrew text the Book of Genesis, chapters 37 to 50, is that of rising from slavery and imprisonment to power, a journey shaped by constant divine intervention from God. Joseph's life is somewhat governed by divine agency. While serving prison time, Joseph accurately interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's former cupbearer and his baker, predicting that the former cupbearer would be restored to his old position and that the baker would die. This is explained by God's presence with him (Genesis 39:21). To his phenomenal guidance to power in the court of Pharaoh, ‘his divine gift’ enables this rise. (https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-story-of-joseph/, accessed 5/10/25). On the other hand, Ferdowsi shapes the Persian hero’s destiny as entirely a product of ethical struggle and human choices in Shahnameh with no gods. CC BY-NC-ND
After 24 Years, Scholar Completes 3,000-Page Translation Of The Hebrew Bible by [[Rachel Martin]]
Great song. Might want to have it performed live on my own wedding.
The Crossing of the Red Sea or Parting of the Red Sea (Hebrew: קריעת ים סוף, romanized: Kriat Yam Suph, lit. "parting of the sea of reeds")[1] is an episode in the origin myth of The Exodus in the Hebrew Bible.
Steinberg, Avi. “After More Than Two Decades of Work, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James.” The New York Times, December 20, 2018, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-translation.html.
Shulevitz, Judith. “‘The Five Books of Moses’: From God’s Mouth to English.” Book Review of The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary by Robert Alter. The New York Times, October 17, 2004, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/the-five-books-of-moses-from-gods-mouth-to-english.html.
Biblical Hebrew has an unusually small vocabulary clustered around an even smaller number of three-letter roots, most of them denoting concrete actions or things, and the Bible achieves its mimetic effects partly through the skillful repetition of these few vivid words.
Goldfajn, Tal. “Thou Shalt Show: On Robert Alter’s Translation of the Hebrew Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Los Angeles Review of Books, June 2, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thou-shalt-show-on-robert-alters-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible/.
Let me illustrate by examining a well-known passage, Genesis 7:17–18, in which the flood comes and Noah’s ark is lifted up above the earth. The example involves the Hebrew syntactic tendency to open each sentence in narrative with “and,” to order the words in parallel clauses by coordination (“and” + “and” + “and”), rather than by subordination (“because,” “so,” or “although”). This biblical syntactic feature, known as parataxis, affects the text’s rhythm, its temporal interpretation, its layers of cohesion and ambiguity. Here is Alter’s rendering of this passage: “And the Flood was forty days over the earth, and the waters multiplied and bore the ark upward and it rose above the earth. And the waters surged and multiplied mightily over the earth, and the ark went on the surface of the water.”
Alter’s approaches the Bible as great literature first and foremost — an approach almost inconceivable before the mid-20th century.
Bruce, James. “The Godless Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Law & Liberty, July 15, 2022. https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-godless-bible/.
Alter says he avoids the phrase “‘like the son of man’ because of its strong, and debatable, tilt toward a messianic interpretation.”
Of course Alter's alternate translation of "son of man" allows one a closer meaning of Jews prior to the first century and Jesus, which adds a lot of undue baggage which may be seen as retconning the Hebrew Bible. It is after all, titled The Hebrew Bible and specifically not The Old Testament, thus placing it into the tradition of Christianity.
Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. 1st edition. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018. https://amzn.to/3QioxiS
The pillars or sacred stones were stones set apart for religious use. The word massebah comes from the Hebrew word nasab, a word which means “to stand.”
There are two words in Hebrew that are associated with standing stones: the word ʼben and the word massebah.
Deutsch (Gotthard) Papers. 1859-1922 (bulk 1900-1920). [MS-123]
https://7079.sydneyplus.com/archive/final/Theme.aspx?r=529915&f=FindingAids%2fms0123.pdf&m=resource
Shortly after Deutsch’s death thealumni of the Hebrew Union College purchased his index for the seminary’s library.15
Benjamin Richler’s Guide to Hebrew Manuscript Collections is the basicreference work for navigating the different libraries and collections of He-brew manuscript collections
Benjamin Richler, A Guide to Hebrew Manuscript Collections (Jerusalem, 1994), 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem, 2014). For an entry on the Geniza, see ibid., 79–81. See also entries for specific libraries and collections.
Scholem’s, given their own reading room at the National Library of Israel.
Hebrew University Jewish mysticism scholar Gershom Scholem's zettelkasten has its own reading room at the National Library of Israel.
Gershom Scholem (1897-1982)
Gotthard Deutsch (1859–1921) taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from 1891 until his death, where he produced a card index of 70,000 ‘facts’ of Jewish history.
Gotthard Deutsch (1859-1921) had a card index of 70,000 items relating to Jewish history.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1560611614226882560.html
A reframing of what the story of the Tower of Babel means.
The moral of the Tower of Babel is to encourage power with rather than power over.
למידת חיזוק
עברית
Lowth seems to have been the first modern Bible scholar to notice or draw attention to the poetic structure of the Psalms and much of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament.
כיצד ההרחבה מסייעת לכתיבה של הערות בגוף התוכן של האתר בו אני צופה כעת?