פָּגִיעַ We need your feedback! Let us know what kind of Hebrew fall course schedule we might offer you! Brené Brown, in a video that I (you too, undoubtedly) can relate to so well, says that at the core of being able to love is the willingness to be vulnerable – to…
הַרְמוֹנְיָה We need your feedback! Let us know what kind of Hebrew fall course schedule we might offer you! Some words just don’t yet exist in proper Hebrew. When I run out of time on a Friday afternoon before Shabbat, I might be wont to publish about one of these….
לְתַקֵּן We need your feedback! Let us know what kind of Hebrew fall course schedule we might offer you! Today I introduced a song by Ehud Banai to my Level 2 intensive class in Jerusalem. Two of the lines in the song go like this: אָז תַּאֲמִין שֶׁאִם קִלְקַלְת – So believe that if you’ve…
קָשּׁוּב We need your feedback! Let us know what kind of Hebrew fall course schedule we might offer you! As I’ve continued reading the chapter on attachment in Daniel J. Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind, I’ve seen that infants learn their place the world by how much sensitivity their parents/caregivers show them. When…
לְהָגֵן We need your feedback! Let us know what kind of Hebrew fall course schedule we might offer you! Today was the first of what’s known in Jewish circles as the “three weeks.” These mark the three weeks of Jerusalem’s impending destruction twice in Biblical and Classical history. They say that the second…
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/בילוי-נעים-#.m4a” /]בִּלּוּי נָעִים Suppose your friends are all going out to see a movie… but you’ve got something better to do. You’d .probably wish them a good time, and then go about your business Here’s how to do so in Hebrew: בליוי נעים![audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/בילוי-נעים-#.m4a” /]. בילוי[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/בילוי-נעים-#.m4a” /] is the noun form (gerund) of…
אַרְגָּז On Friday I went to שׁוּק מַחֲנֶה יְהוּדָה – “The Shuk“ in Jerusalem (shouk mah-khah-NEH yeh-HOO-dah – pronunciation colloquial) – to buy some items in preparation for a Shabbat dinner I hosted for a couple of friends. I was looking for some corn chips to spice up the…
עֵדָה, קְהִלָּה, קְהִלִּיָּה There are small communities and there are large communities. There are internet communities and there are multinational communities. Two Biblical Hebrew roots generate several Modern Hebrew words to cover all these bases: ק.ה.ל (k.h.l) and ע.ד.ה (a.d.h). The most common word for community refers to the one typically centered around a…
חֲמַקְמַק, חֲלַקְלַק… I’m reading about the Mossad’s battle against the Black September terrorists in הַמּוֹסַד – The Mossad (hah-moh-SAHD), a book by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal. I hear it’s been translated to English. A word used there to describe Mohamed Bodya, the Algerian fine-arts-aficionado/playboy behind many terror attacks in Europe…
חַיִים אֲרוּכִּים This one’s for my friend Zevik in Encino, California. I would give him a call and he’d say, יֵש לְךָ חַיִים אֲרוּכִּים – you (will) have a long life. This is the charm Israelis wish one another if they thus telepathically find one another and make contact. In English,…
Announcement (your word of the day follows) This Thursday is the final day to register and receive 200 shekels off of Ulpan La-Inyan August-September classes. We’ve got our regular six-week courses as well as a few three-week intensives at a variety of levels, in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Efrat and Raanana. Some testimonials…