Comments on: Happy New Year!

By: danithew

danithew — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Shanah tovah!

By: Naomi Frandsen

Naomi Frandsen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m glad BCC observes Jewish New Year. I’m actually going to an honest-to-goodness Jewish dinner tonight at the family of a friend of mine, and I fully intend to use those phrases to my advantage. I have to admit, I was a little chagrined to observe that Rosh Hashana was not given more air time on my local NPR station. What happened to the Jewish-controlled liberal media?

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

great stuff, Naomi! I’ve never celebrated the holidays, although Sumer wants to do a Seder sometime. I think these are wonderful traditions, and can infuse our commonplace holidays with new meaning if we’re open to them.

About the liberal media — I know, I know!

By: anne

anne — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m on a Kabbalah mailing list because I find much of their lessons insightful.

They believe that the first day of Rosh Hashanah is the actual day on which Adam and Eve were created, and that this holiday is a celebration of rebirth for the year to come. â€œEvery year, the Creator allows you to return to that embryonic state for 48 hours and create a blueprint for the coming year.â€ Before Rosh Hashanah you examine your life to repent, forgive others, and decide what you want for the new yearâ€”and then you give what you hope to receive (kinda like karma).

What a great way to begin to â€œget some fresh air for the yearâ€!!

Past weekly emails that discuss on Rosh Hashanah, if anyoneâ€™s interested:

http://www.astrouniversity.com/consciousness.htm

http://view.exacttarget.com/?ffcc17-fe9016707c62047470-fe2815757365007e741d79-fef015747c6d0c

By: mds

mds — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

And let’s not forget the ties between Rosh Hashanah and the Book of Mormon! See, e.g., Lenet Hadley Read, â€œThe Golden Plates and the Feast of Trumpets,â€ Ensign, Jan. 2000, 25

By: David J

David J — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Steve, where did you get that translation? It's not as sharp as I would have expected. I sure hope it's not the JPS or the NASB (my two faves!). I would have rendered the term 'olam as "eternal" instead of "universe." As far as I know, there really is no term in the OT for "universe," excepting one chooses to go with ha-shamayim which is generally rendered "the heavens." The word "universe" puts too much modern meaning into a Hebrew term that just doesn't carry the same semantic weight, IMHHO (In My Honest Hebrew Opinion). Oh and maybe someone out there (Ronan or John C.?) could help me with this one: Why in the world did JS give his transliteration of 'olam as "gnolaum" in Abr. 3:18? Phonetically, I'm fine with the "au" part (I'll bet there were no standardized transliteration rules in the 1830s), but I don't get the "gn" part. It doesn't make sense phonetically or otherwise. The only NW Semitic connection I can think of is the Ugaritic letter "gayin," but I don't believe the Ugaritic cognate for the Hebrew 'olam even contains the letter gayin as far as I remember... Anybody have anything on this strange transliteration?

By: Chad Too

Chad Too — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My best friend is a Jewish LDS convert. We have a traditional Rosh Hashanah dinner with his family each year, and this year we invited an additional family where the dad is a Jewish convert to Mormonism (he just replaced me in our bishopric)

I’ve been preparing since Friday. Chicken soup with matzo balls, a nice brisket of beef, pomegranates, apples with honey for dipping. The kids all marched around the living room pretending they had shofars.

And the best part… leftovers!

By: Ben S.

Ben S. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

David J.: Hebrew orthography used ‘ayin for two sounds, the ‘ayin and ghayin (which survived independantly in Ugaritic and Arabic). Though the sound of ghayin eventually merged with ayin in Hebrew, it was still there by NT days. For example, the English pronounciation of Gomorrah comes to us through the Greek Septuagint, which spelled it with a g, even though in Hebrew Gomorrah begins with an ayin.

Joseph Smith’s Hebrew teacher, Josiah Seixas, was a Sephardic Jew, and pronounced ayin more like the old ghayin. You can see it in his transliterations in grammar he wrote. He also pronounced qamets like an -aw- Hence, we have gnolaum instead of olam.

Ben McGuire used to have a .pdf of Seixas grammar on his website.

By: Ben S.

Ben S. — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“I don’t believe the Ugaritic cognate for the Hebrew ‘olam even contains the letter gayin as far as I remember…”

As a follow-up, you are right about this. ( I don’t think I made that clear.) Both the Ug. and Arb. cognates are spelled with ayin instead of ghayin, but due to Seixas’ Sephardic pronounciation, it sounded much more gutteral.

By: David J

David J — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ben S.: yo, thanks for the info. It's so sad to me that us "gringos" learn Hebrew by pronouncing the 'aleph and the 'ayin the same way. One of my profs indicated that a true speaker speaks and hears the difference. My training didn't emphasize phonetics much at all, just translation/reading ability and syntax/grammar. Seixas' grammar would be an interesting addition to my out-of-control "religion" file on the C drive. Thanks for pointing it out. I have noticed the gayin issue with Gohorrah once before, and I believe I also spotted it on another word (I think it was a proper noun as well), but I can't remember that word at all. It's been two years since I ran into it. The gayin issue is interesting, and does explain the presence of the "g," but I still wonder about that blasted letter "n" in the transliteration. I guess, as you say, it's more of a phonetic device to match the gutteral sound of the 'ayin, although I wonder what the original language (Egyptian?) counterpart for the transliteration would have been.