Forward.com

A Turn of PhraseDavid Gruber writes from Win–nipeg, Manitoba: “I have recently encountered a new use of the word ‘trope.’ The first instance was a commentator describing a politician deviating from his party’s platform as ‘not following the party trope.’ The second, in an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, was the sentence ‘A Cameron Diaz character is not such a bad trope to model one’s life on.’ In Yiddish, a Torah reader in the synagogue who is proficient in cantillating the melody according to the notes is said ‘to follow the trop.’ Is there a connection?”
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A Case of Uncertain MurderRabbi Michael Lotker of Camarillo, Calif., writes: “Some years ago I heard a Christian minister say that the King James translation of the fifth of the Ten Commandments, the Hebrew lo tirtsaḥ, as ‘Thou shalt not kill’ rather than ‘Thou shalt not murder’ was an accurate translation for its day. His claim was that when the King James Version was published, the English word ‘kill’ meant what we now mean by ‘murder,’ whereas the English word ‘slay’ meant what we now mean by ‘kill.’ Is this true?”
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A Toast a Tish and a Tu B’ShvatNow that elections have been held in America, we have them to look forward to in Israel. They will take place February 10, despite the attempt of Knesset member Ya’akov Litzman, the parliamentary head of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisra’el party, to postpone them. Why? Because this year, the 10th of February comes out on the 16th of the Hebrew month of Shvat, the day after Tu B’Shvat, the Arbor Day of the Jewish calendar on which many Hasidic groups hold a tish that lasts long into the night. It wouldn’t be fair to the Hasidim, Litzman argued, to have to rise, groggy, the next morning and go to the polls to vote.
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