From Dennis Gottfried comes this query: “Since European Jews used the Hebrew alphabet to write Judeo-German or Yiddish, and Spanish Jews used it to write Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, I wonder whether other Jewish populations in the history of the Diaspora — ones speaking Persian or Arabic, for example — did the same thing.”Read More
From down under in Melbourne, Australia, Lauren Wiener writes: “Could you please explain how ‘Nusach Sfard’ came to be the Nusach of some Ashkenazi Jews and why the family name Ashkenazi exists mostly among Sephardic Jews?”Read More
I suppose it is late in the day to plunge into the argument over J Street, the “pro-Israel” Political Action Committee — as it likes to call itself — whose repeated criticism of Israeli government policies and actions has many supporters of Israel up in arms. Still, with the organization’s first annual conference in Washington the week of October 25, I find it hard to resist.Read More
Rashi Fein writes from Boston: “In a column in the New York Times on September 30, Maureen Dowd writes that the late William Safire chastised her for her spelling of ‘meshugas’ in the sentence, ‘Cheney & Co. had shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam’s W.M.D. into Colin Powell’s U.N. speech.’ According to Safire, ‘mishegoss’ would have been more correct. Taking this to heart, Dowd ended her tribute to him, ‘He was a mensch. And that’s no mishegoss.’Read More
Just what did Cain say to Abel before killing him? Every time we read the first portion of Genesis all over again on the holiday of Simchat Torah, I’m sure many of you ask yourselves the same question.Read More