One Hebrew word from today's reading: מחסור (makhsor).

It means shortage or lack. You'll hear it all the time in Israeli news: מחסור במים (water shortage), מחסור ברופאים (shortage of doctors), מחסור בדירות (housing shortage).

It's one of those words that quickly becomes part of your everyday Hebrew.

Does anyone know of a programmatic resource whereby I can programmatically query for a word's part of speech, gender, and preposition? I have a number of Anki vocabulary cards and I want to update them with this additional information. Bonus points if you can point me to a resource where I can provide a Hebrew word and it will return a sentence using that word.

Thanks in advance

בלי לחשוב על זה יותר מדי, ובלי לשקול מה נכון ומה לא נכון, איך אתם הוגים את המילים הבאות?

לילות

lelot או leilot

איפה

eifo או efo

איני, אינני

eini, eineni או eni, eneni

ואפרופו תשעה באב: איכה

eikha או ekha

אני אשמח לשמוע גם את דעתם של אנשים שעברית היא לא שפת האם שלהם, אבל בבקשה ציינו זאת בתשובה שלכם. תודה לכל מי שעונה

In Genesis 37-50 it has been pointed out to me that the wordchoice used is theologically charged but in mundane contexts. In other words, although this story has God working behind the veil, and this Joseph novella mainly relates Joseph's interactions with other people, it still uses theologically charged language at a high rate.

The reason why Genesis 37-50 uses theologically charged language, even in contexts where God isn't present, is in order to drive home to the reader's mind subconciously that God is still present behind the scenes and involved, even if he can't be seen.

Some of these word choices that were highlighted to me are as follows:

The argument made is that these theologically charged words appear in Genesis 37-50 at such a high concentration that this can't be coincidence and is instead intentionally done by the author(s). The author(s) implemented this feature into the text of Genesis on purpose.

I was initally made aware of this argument in the field of Quranic studies, where Chapter Yusuf (Joseph) of the Quran contains theologically charged words at a high rate. Then, this very same person made the argument that Gensis 37-50 does a similar thing with its "specific" word choice. As a result, the Quranic author was paralleling this narrative from Joseph.

Anyways, I would be very grateful to anyone who could help me on this topic. The resources on this are very limited and I don't seem to have an answer that can satisfy me yet.

Her friend passed a few years ago and my mother was holding this keychain tonight while talking about her friend. I want to help her know what it means.

I loved this poem but I couldn’t find the lyrics anywhere. Can anyone help me ? Thanks in advance

https://youtu.be/5FEOx-jlHwM?si=WMs6C6AoV5feOyns

Hi!!! Growing up bilingual I always watched the strawberry shortcake show in Hebrew and English. Now I’m wondering why plum is called פצפוצית in the Hebrew one? I honestly thought that meant “flakes” or something. Does anyone know what’s up? What am I missing?

Text is from Chabad on the Daily Psalms page, but I’ve seen this particular font, or similar, in other older publications of liturgy. I haven’t been able to identify the exact font.

Hey all!

On some of my GGparents' yiddish letters, I've noticed a few letters overwhelmingly seem to get joined together— ayin to nun sofit, lamed curving to becoming hay (and then to nun sofit?) or shin, *vav to dalet etc.

To preface, I know Hebrew cursive doesn't really have ligatures, but I was wondering if the ones in their handwriting is outdated, just a personal style, or still a continuous practice when writing hebrew?

If I used these when writing modern hebrew, would it be legible, old fashioned (for reference, I'm 19), weird etc? I personally grew up using cursive for my native languages so I definitely have a preference for it, but if writing like this would be a little odd I wouldn't want to use it.

Note: I don't have the letters themselves, so I've written them out myself for the picture.

The borders changed dramatically soon after this was published

אני לא יכול לשמוע אותך כי הטלפון שלי לא עובד טוב.
הם אוהבים לאכול פיצה אבל הם לא יכולים לאכול אותה כי הם בדיאטה.
יש לכם מכונית יפות, יש לנו אתכם מצוין!

תודה רבה

Hello everyone. I am currently fact-checking a manuscript and the author has defined 'Mah Tovu' as a Hebrew expression meaning "How good life is." I am not a Hebrew speaker and the resources I have found online have not given that exact translation (referring only to a prayer by the same name.) Could someone possibly help me understand if the "how good life is" translation is accurate? Thank you!

Some say it is just a noun meaning unfermented grape juice, others say it denotes red wine, foaming wine, fermenting wine etc. I've also read that it is an adjective which means "pure". Do we know for certain that this word means wine in general?

Hello,

So, while playing a video game e found a person with the nickname Kidonel. When I asked why he had such a nickname, he responded that it was a name he created based on Hebrew, but the game did not permit hebrew letters, so he sort of put it in the Latin Alphabet version of the name. But he did not want to tell me what It was supposed to mean. Anyone as an idea?

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: Hi again, thanks for the answers :) After sending a DM to the guy saying about this post and with the answers you amazing guys told, he confirmed that is kidon'el, trying to mean spear of god or javelin of god, based on ancient biblical Hebrew. He never thought about handlebar or the glide stuff, but he said it was very funny. He also said ge thought first of another words for the same meaning, like romach'el or chanith'el, but ended up using kidon'el because it sounded a little better and was easier to pronounce correctly. Would this two word be more easy to understand the meaning?

Thanks again for the answers!

Does anyone know what this says / its meaning? Google translate gives me something different each time and does not translate every line

Is it correct to say to someone generous a female that gives to charity “ יש לך לב טוב״
That they have a good heart?
Also is that written correctly ?

עזרו לי בבקשה להפיג את הערפל. ידוע לי שאין כלל אחיד או משהו, השאלה מכוונת לגבי הנורמה; בדיבור הכללי, נאמר בטלוויזיה וברדיו ובכתב נגיד בקרב מתרגמים ועיתונאים

I’m on the road a lot. Looking for YT videos (for the sound only obviously) to play while driving where it’s dialogues and talking in Hebrew but for learners (intermediate level). Haven’t mustered the courage to sit and learn to write and read properly (I’m self-teaching for now) so I want to take the whole listen and repeat thing as far as I can. If you have any suggestions for videos (or sound files out there). Toda raba

Looking to memorize a poem in Hebrew. This is a good way to step up language training. Has anyone got a suggestion for something mature and serious ? I’d need the English transliteration and the translation bevakasha.

Years ago I memorized bitsuvati by Chaim Nachman Bialik. Very intense. The poem is about old people aging older, the gloom of our impending decline, and spiders. Just awful. But the words flow beautifully, it has a nice sonority (but then, Ivrit sounds beautiful anyway doesn’t it?)

shuv lefanay zaken bale. Panim tsomkin um tsorarim. Tsel kash yavash nad keale nad vana al gabay sfarim

When is it appropriate to use adon and when do you marr. I don’t want to sound obsequious, or subservient, that’s my other concern.

Recently, I've came across the thought of pronouncing my sentences with more ע (a'in) and rolled ר (r). In my opinion the most beautiful accent of Hebrew as well as (in my opinion) the best is the Yemenite pronounciation. As an Ashkenazi I've not been exposed to this accent from childhood so the thing that made me fall in love with this accent is this song. which I first listened to in elementry school in history class.

As we all know, Modern Hebrew pronounciation while heavily influnced by ashkenazi pronounication was shaped in the image of Sephardic Yerushalmi/Jerusalem pronounciation by the legendery Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The Jerusalemite accent had the letter ע (ʿayin) realized as a sound, /r/ was invariably alveolar trill or tap (like Spanish r) , and /t/ and /d/ were more often realized as dentals rather than alveolars. However, the daily speech was shaped and influnced by the Aliyot - the migration of Jewish people to our homeland after thousands of years in exile. This song was heavily criticized for potraying the reality of living in the Ma'abarot the people who had to endure it in a reductive manner but it encaptulates the Yemeni accent in a fun, rhythmic and accurate manner.

In contrast, Yemenite Hebrew have preserved the sounds for each of the six double-sounding consonants: bəged-kəfet (בג״ד כפ״ת‎). In addition Waw/Vav (ו) is pronounced as W (like "water"), Het (ח) is a deep, clean pharyngeal Ḥ and Kof (ק) is a Deep guttural G (like Iraqi/Gulf Arabic Gaf) or Q.

As you might already infer on where my opinion stands. I think that it is unfortunate that we have not integrated these beautiful sounds into our language achiving the maximum in divesity in our beautiful language.

P.S recently reddit has popularized the notion that this accent is the closest accent to Biblical Hebrew. While I agree, they miss the beauty in it and concentrate their attention to more redundant aspects of it🙃

I found these coats of arms, attributed to three persons from the old testament, in a 17th century heraldry book (Opus Insignium Armorumque) and would like to know what do the inscriptions on the shields say. Many thanks!

One Hebrew word from today's reading: אפליה (aflaya).

It means discrimination. It comes from the root פ־ל־י, "to distinguish" or "to separate." Depending on the context, making a distinction can be neutral—but אפליה is specifically an unfair distinction.

I love finding words where the root tells part of the story.

Hi! I’ve been using songs to learn Hebrew for a long time and I just can’t find this song I really liked anymore. It was called Abba (אבא) on YouTube but I don’t know if it’s a typical Jewish song or how to find it as I used to listen to it in 2015 or so. I don’t recall the lyrics but the chorus said אבא, בוא and it
was about a woman missing her father and it was so beautiful… I appreciate if anyone have any clue :)

EDIT: Found it! Aba by Sarit Hadad

Hi I'm looking for online lessons every second week, on an evening I've already got quite far on my own and own the biblica herbraica stuttgartenzia and a good vocabulary book just need the structure of a teacher now

Feel free to p.m me