Day 1
Hebrew 10/Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 17/Jewish Studies 20.2
While only 16 people were registered according to the registrar's website, many more people showed up. I'd wager that most of the students are jewish because a show of hands revealed that almost all were familiar with the hebrew alphabet, but only 2 could actually read -- as opposed to pronounce -- hebrew (in other words, they had a similar hebrew school experience to my own). The prof is a lively guy -- he and this class got a good review from a cycling team member I talked with -- and fits the stereotypical Israeli/Jewish appearance (even if he weren't wearing a yarmulke). He is also apparently the first "Professor of Hebrew" (or some other title) since his the previous person to hold the post died of tuberculous in 1807 and wasn't replaced.
In addition to the standard first day fare (going over the sylibus, recording peoples names, etc.) he gave a brief overview of the hebrew language (who would have known it when, was it a spoken or written language (like latin), etc.) which was quite interesting. The short answer is that jews mostly stopped speaking it during late antiquities (they started speaking aramaic) at which point it stuck around as a written language pretty much until the creation of Israel. There was also renewed interest in hebrew by many christians around the time of the reformation, but interest (at least in the united states) died out around the time of the previous professor of hebrew.
The prof also went in to the origin of the words "jew" and "hebrew" and why one refers to a language and another to a people. I knew the former came from the kingdom of Judaea. The latter comes from a words that appears 6 times in the bible, a name for the jews that was used when talking with foreigners. How the two words ended up in their current roles is anyone's guess, although at different times and in different languages (eg Russian) they are used differently.
While only 16 people were registered according to the registrar's website, many more people showed up. I'd wager that most of the students are jewish because a show of hands revealed that almost all were familiar with the hebrew alphabet, but only 2 could actually read -- as opposed to pronounce -- hebrew (in other words, they had a similar hebrew school experience to my own). The prof is a lively guy -- he and this class got a good review from a cycling team member I talked with -- and fits the stereotypical Israeli/Jewish appearance (even if he weren't wearing a yarmulke). He is also apparently the first "Professor of Hebrew" (or some other title) since his the previous person to hold the post died of tuberculous in 1807 and wasn't replaced.
In addition to the standard first day fare (going over the sylibus, recording peoples names, etc.) he gave a brief overview of the hebrew language (who would have known it when, was it a spoken or written language (like latin), etc.) which was quite interesting. The short answer is that jews mostly stopped speaking it during late antiquities (they started speaking aramaic) at which point it stuck around as a written language pretty much until the creation of Israel. There was also renewed interest in hebrew by many christians around the time of the reformation, but interest (at least in the united states) died out around the time of the previous professor of hebrew.
The prof also went in to the origin of the words "jew" and "hebrew" and why one refers to a language and another to a people. I knew the former came from the kingdom of Judaea. The latter comes from a words that appears 6 times in the bible, a name for the jews that was used when talking with foreigners. How the two words ended up in their current roles is anyone's guess, although at different times and in different languages (eg Russian) they are used differently.
1 Comments:
my goodness i really hated this class..best of luck to you
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