2 שְׁכִיבוֹת סְמִיכָה For a good workout, I prefer to ride my bicycle and to do push-ups, over shelling out money on a gym membership. The Hebrew expression for push-ups is שכיבות סמיכה (sheh-khee-VOHT smee-KHAH). שְׁכִיבָה (sheh-khee-VAH) means lying down. It comes from the verb לִשְׁכַּב (leesh-KAHV), meaning to lie down. סמיכה (smee-KHAH) comes from…
לְהָעִיד Last night I attended the wedding of my friend יוֹחָנָן (yoh-khah-NAHN). I was given the honor of serving as an official witness – עֵד (ehd) – at the ceremony. Now, I was an עד last night, but I hope to never have to testify – לְהָעִיד (leh-hah-EED). Testimony is עֵדוּת (eh-DOOT). להעיד is…
צָמִיג About an hour and a half ago I was feeling tired and a bit out of sorts. So I deliberated between taking a nap and taking a bike ride. I chose the latter – and now I’m feeling good. I rode from my flat on Emek Refaim in Jerusalem to the Malha…
מֻקְפָּץ Yesterday evening I had dinner with my friend Avi, who takes pride in his delicious, healthy cooking. He fried us up some schnitzel, but when I commented that he was frying it in olive oil instead of Canola, he corrected me, saying that was sautéeing, not frying. Sauté comes from French. The…
אַשְׁמָה, לְהַאֲשִׁים Note the similarity between the English word shame and the Hebrew word אָשֵׁם (ah-SHEM). The Hebrew word describes a male as guilty. A guilty female would be אֲשֵׁמָה (ah-sheh-MAH). Guilt, that nasty feeling that might nevertheless provoke us to do good, is אַשְׁמָה. One might say, יֵשׁ לִי רִגְשֵׁי אַשְׁמָה (yesh lee…
מָלוּחַ My סַבְתָּא (SAHV-tah) grandmother is a great cook. She learned how to prepare delicious dishes from her mother back in Hungary before the war. סבתא has Hungarian taste in food. So from time to time she asks me, אֲתָּה אוֹהֵב דָּג מָלוּחַ (ah-TAH oh-HEV dahg mah-LOO-ahkh) – Do you like salty fish?…
לְזַהוֹת Explosives were planted yesterday on a public phone opposite בִּנְיָנֵי הָאוּמָה (been-yah-NEH-ee hah-oo-MAH) – The Buildings of the Nation. Had a man not noticed the suspicious-looking phone and alerted a group of teenagers standing by it to move away, the tragic attack of pure terror could have been a lot more so….
Your window into Israeli culture: Ami’s Hebrew-music show on RustyMike Radio (your daily dose is below) Today from noon to 1 Israel-time I’m presenting the usual greats – Shlomo Artzi, Ehud Banai… and the Idan Raichel song that was featured this past Friday on Ktzat Ivrit: מִנְעִי קוֹלֵך מִבֶּכִי (meen-EE koh-LEKH mee-BEH-khee) –…
לְצַיֵּץ My guess is that there’s an 90% chance you’ve heard of Twitter. If you haven’t, here’s the site itself, as well as what Amazon lists as one of the best books on the subject. When I first visited Twitter, it took me a while to see the connection between the name of…
שִׁשִּׁיָּה If you know some Hebrew, you certainly know the Hebrew word for six – שֵׁש (shesh) in the feminine and שִׁשָּׁה (shee-SHAH) in the masculine (learned in Level 1 of Ulpan La-Inyan). Yes, it’s counterintuitive – normally the “ah” ending comes with feminine words. Note how both שישה and שש sound somewhat like the…
לִשְׂמוֹחַ Today was Purim in Jerusalem, so I’m just getting around to the word of the day now. You’ve all got the benefit of reading the product of my imagination as I’m sobering up – almost there, but not quite. In English, emotional reactions are typically adjectives – such as angry and…