You don't look Jewish...
Alright, definitely hating the new picture. Must change later.
Anyway, I think everyone in my history class possibly hates me. My teacher was asking something like, "If Jews and Christians and Muslims all have one god, is it the same god?".
And some girl goes, "Well don't the Jews call god 'yahweh'?" or something like that and I got slightly too defensive and was like, "No!! Jews call god 'Adonai'" 'cause "Yahweh" is this very old fashionedy thing they taught in schools which is the literal pronounciation of the hebrew spelling of "Adonai" which is supposed to be unpronouncable and when you see it's supposed to mean "Adonai" and not be read phoenetically...I hope I explained that okay.*
I think I got that all right, not sure. But yeah, I think I might have gotten slightly too defensivey when I was really more thinking "Wtf, who still teaches that?" and now I'm afraid the people in my class don't like me. 'Cause I think some of them were a little iffy on Jews in the first place since when my teacher said he was Jewish some guy was like "You're a Jew?!" and then this other girl wouldn't believe him and made a face when she found out he was Jewish. She flipped it around later, but I still remember the face she made.
Only place I've ever really felt like people might not like me 'cause of my religion.
Crazy school.
Time for math. Adios.
*EDITED for Linda's explanation that I'm just copying and pasting: if you're interested, the actual thing is that god's real name is so holy we can't say it, and adonai is what we say instead, while yahweh is like you said the literal pronunciation of the spelling of the real name that most people don't even know because no one ever says it
posted by Robin @ 9:12 AM
2 Comments:
so it's weird that on the main page it has the new new picture, and when i click the comments link it has the old new picture.
As far as I understand it, you and Linda are both sort of correct. We used to know how to pronounce God's name, but that knowledge was lost, because God's name is so holy it was not often spoken. It is spelled yud-heh-vav-heh, but we do not know how to vocalize it, we do not know the vowels. Some have taken the corresponding y-h-v-h spelling and decided to pronounce it "Yahweh." This is not know to be the "literal pronouciation" because we do not know the vocalizations/vowels. We Jews do not do this because it is our custom to not try to pronounce it, both because we could pronounce it wrong, and because we could pronounce it correctly. (Nevermind that "Yahweh" involves a "w" which is not the sound of a vav.) Those who use Yahweh are certain that this is God's name, and Jews do not insist on such certainty. So, we substitute "Adonai" for God's name, but we also reserve it for holy use as if it were God's name, otherwise using "Hashem" meaning "the name." There are also lots of other God names that are sometime sused instead of "Adonai."
Post a Comment
<< Home