Transliteration: Handy or Handicap?

Going from Reform to Conservative Judaism, one change is noticeable immediately. Before they start singing and you notice the tunes are different, before you notice that not just the men, but the majority of women are wearing a kippah, you open the prayer book and notice that it's just in Hebrew with English translations. There's hardly any transliteration (where the Hebrew is spelled out phonetically in the alphabet instead of the aleph-bet).

The old Reform prayer book was set up in a similar style to the Conservative prayer book, which was first printed in 1989. But in 2007 the Reform movement replaced that with their new book, called the Mishkan T'filah, which features Hebrew, transliteration, and English translation. The Mishkan T'filah and Reform Judaism are how I learned Jewish services and the transliteration is probably the thing I miss most about them since making the switch to Conservative Judaism.

But is transliteration handy or a handicap?

Handy
Transliteration makes it easier to follow along. When people are talking really fast, they tend not to enunciate and when that's happening in a language you don't know, with a different alphabet, it's easy to get lost on the first word. When I first started going to synagogue, I heard a jumble of unfamiliar sounds strung together, but I could read what they were saying and kind of follow along that way. The transliteration allowed me to follow along silently at first and, once I was comfortable with the tunes and the language, to chant/sing along. Transliteration helped me distinguish words from each other and then I could learn words and meanings by hearing them and saying them over and over in different prayers. So even if I can't spell them in Hebrew, I know these common words:
vimru = and we say
shalom = peace, hello, goodbye
Mitzrayim = Egypt
avinu = our father
sh'ma = hear
l'dor vador = from generation to generation

I learned the Hebrew aleph-bet on my own, because I want to learn Hebrew and then I started trying to follow along with the actual Hebrew in the book. If I ever got lost (which I did frequently), I always had the transliteration to fall back on to find my place. Being able to follow along and participate gave me confidence, which is always nice.

Handicap
On the other hand, taking the transliteration for granted in the Reform movement left me completely out of my element when I switched to Conservative Judaism. I can barely follow along with the prayers I know, because I can't read the Hebrew fast enough. I felt like I was fairly active in trying to connect the transliteration to the actual Hebrew, so I can't imagine how lost I would be if I had just ignored the Hebrew column altogether. Now I feel like I have to re-learn everything and my confidence in services is completely shot. I feel worse about not being able to participate now than I did when I first got interested in Judaism, because at least then I was new to the religion. Now that I know what it's like to be able to participate or at least follow along, I feel like an idiot at services.

There are a lot of really important reasons to know Hebrew too. For one thing, Hebrew characters show us the roots of words and how they are related in a way that transliteration doesn't. The way Hebrew works, the letters are all consonants and marks under or next to those consonants serve as the vowels. So two words can be made up of the exact same consonants (thus sharing a root), but have different vowels that give them different meanings. Being able to see those things in the Hebrew allows you to make connections that you can't do with a translation or transliteration.

I need to learn Hebrew to do serious in-depth Torah study. I love Torah study; it's possibly my favorite part of the week. I have a really excellent Torah study group here and there's plenty to talk about each week using just English translations. But some things don't translate quite right out of Hebrew and some words carry double meanings that don't come across in translations, but that add new meaning to the story. Besides that, I don't know of any Torah that has been transliterated and I don't think it would be worth it anyway. Transliteration is great for prayer books, because it allows people to participate in the services even if they don't know Hebrew or they're rusty. As I demonstrated above, I think transliteration is a great way to pick up random vocab, if you're paying attention. The Torah, on the other hand, is meant to be read and studied. Being able to read it in Hebrew through transliterations doesn't help that goal, since there's no comprehension of what's going on actually involved.

Have I answered my question? No. I'm a good Jew in that sense. I'm probably not going to answer it either, but feel free to tell me what you think!

Warding off evil in The Exorcist

I saw The Exorcist (1973) for the first time on Halloween. I hate scary movies and this one is consistently voted onto "Top Horror Films" lists across the film community, but it was the price I paid for wanting to be social on Halloween.

It is scary. And gross. I could have gone my whole life without seeing it, but the rest of the night was fun, so I guess it was worth it. I tried to keep my mind off the scary parts of the movie by focusing on little things and came across a piece of Judaism almost right away.

In the movie the little girl, Regan, gets possessed. Sorry if I just ruined the movie for you, but I promise that will be the last spoiler and the movie is so ingrained in popular culture that you really should have known that part already. In several scenes at the beginning of the movie, Chris, the mother, is seen wearing a particular necklace.

Regan (before possession) and Chris. Image courtesy of imdb.com

Image courtesy of judaica-mall.com

You can't see Chris' necklace that well in this picture (though it's clearly visible if you're looking for it in the movie), but it is a hamsa hand necklace. The second photo should give you an idea of what her necklace looks like. The hamsa hand is a symbol found in many ancient and modern religions (including Judaism) and it is thought to ward off evil. I'm not generally a superstitious person, but there was this one week where a bunch of little things kept going slightly wrong and I seriously considered getting a hamsa hand necklace, in part because of the superstition and in part because I wanted an everyday Jewish necklace and hamsas come in millions of designs. In the end, I went with a Mogen David/Chai combination that I posted a few months ago. Probably a good idea, since the hamsa didn't seem to work for Chris and Regan in this movie.

Here is a better picture of my new necklace than I originally posted. The Mogen David (or Star of David) is a typical symbol of Jewish identity. The symbol in the middle is a chai, which is Hebrew for life. The chai is an important part of Jewish life; we shout "L'chaim!" ("to life!") at weddings, b'nai mitzvot, conversions, holidays, and any occasion that celebrates and affirms life. If you've ever received a monetary gift from a Jewish friend and noticed that it was a multiple of 18 instead of a multiple of 5 ($72 instead of $75, for example), you can attribute it to the chai as well. The practice of giving in multiples of 18 is based on a Kabbalah (a mystical part of Judaism) number system, which assigns numerical values to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The word chai is made up of the letters chet (8) and yud (10), making 18. Thus, the number 18 and its multiples stand for life and giving in those amounts means you are giving a wish for life. I hunted for a Jewish necklace for a very long time trying to find one that I would want to wear every day and that would outwardly symbolize the profound meaning that I find in Judaism. This necklace has worked out perfectly.

Genesis

Background on how Jews read the Torah/Bible
The Torah is the first five books of the Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The entire Torah is broken into portions (parshiot in Hebrew) and we read one per week in order. When we get to the end, we start over with Genesis. Since we just passed the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), we started over with Parsha Bereishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). There is a corresponding Haftarah reading (a reading from the other parts of the "Old Testament." These do not necessarily go in order). You can find all the portions and their corresponding Haftarah readings here.

Actual topicAnyway, we just started over last week. It amazes me just how much stuff is packed into Genesis. In Bereishit, for example, we get two creation stories, the forbidden fruit, Cain and Abel, and then a list of descendants all the way up to Noah. In Torah study last week, we skipped creation and spent almost two hours just talking about Cain and Abel.

This week, in Parsha Noah, we read:

• the flood,
• the first vineyard, which was immediately followed by a very drunk, naked Noah in a tent,
• another long list of descendants as Noah's sons repopulate the world,
• the Tower of Babel,
• and more descendants, ending with the introduction of Abram and Sarai (soon to be Abraham and Sarah).

So basically, there is a lot packed into Genesis and, even though it's the same content every year, there's always something new to focus on. This deliberate way of reading the Torah is one of my favorite parts of Judaism.

Shabbat Shalom!