Nas Daily on the Jerusalem Syndrome

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/לגמור-1.m4a” /]לִגְמוֹר, לְסַיֵּם Modern Hebrew has two common words for to finish. לגמור[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/לגמור-2.m4a” /], the word used in the Bible, is probably the better-known one to people who are familiar with Hebrew but who are not native speakers. לגמור is used in Modern Hebrew primarily to mean to finish something – it is a transitive verb, one…

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/להקריא-1.m4a” /]לְהַקְרִיא As mentioned earlier this week, the Hebrew word לקרוא[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/להקריא-2.m4a” /] first meant to call out, but took on the additional meaning of to read when the literate few would read texts out loud to the illiterate masses. Thus in Biblical Hebrew, there is no distinction between reading and reading out loud. In the Modern era, when literacy is at an…

[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/פיסול-#.m4a” /]פִּסּוּל If you’ve read some of the Bible in Hebrew, you are almost certainly familiar with the word פסל[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/פיסול-#.m4a” /] – graven image or statue. There, the simple פעל verb לפסול[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/פיסול-#.m4a” /] means to chisel, as in: [audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/פיסול-#.m4a” /]פְּסָל לְךָ שְׁנֵי לֻחֹת אֲבָנִים כָּרִאשֹׁנִים (שמות ל”ד, א’) Chisel out two stone tablets like the…