Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The politics of dreidels

I'm told that in the weekly 'Alim Litrufah[1]' newsletter that one finds in some shuls there was an article about dreidels which helpfully explained that a dreidel is a [2] ס .סביבון בלע"ז.

[[1]1Not to be confused with 'Alim Litrufah,' the prospectus and introduction of the Pentateuch translation and commentary by Moses Mendelssohn.
1[2] לע"ז means "the vernacular," but is often seen as an acronym which means לשון עם זר. Which is to say, in this case, modern Hebrew is being called a foreign language, or more precisely, the language of a foreign nation.

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails
'