Dear Friends, This is a repeat but I think necessary note about my posts which are received via email. As you know, my posts about classical history often contain foreign language characters from Hebrew and Greek. The program which takes the post and converts it to email can't deal with those characters, so they come through as ??? or other gibberish.

This issue turned up in one of my social media conversations, and I think it deserves a bit more explanation, so I’ll do that here. I mentioned that while our rabbinic ancestors did everything possible to deny it, in fact crucifixion was practiced by Judean authorities, and a similar form of execution might even be sanctioned by the Torah. Josephus reports regarding the Hasmonean king Alexander Janaeus, Antiquities 13:379-80:

I had one of those "only in the universe of social media" events today, and I don't mean that in a good way--which is sort of the theme of this post! I belong to a group on Facebook which focuses on the Yiddish language and today my feed included a post advising people not to use the word "Shiksa" (or "Shiktza") as it should always be regarded as a pejorative.

The election of Zohran Mamdani keeps yielding interesting points for conversation. The opposition to Mamdani is boiling over with denunciations of him as if he is some sort Soviet-style communist. Part of these opinions is based on a misunderstanding of economics most of learned in High School--at least when I attended that level of education. First of all, Mamdani's economic orientation has absolutely no basis in Soviet-style Communism.

The Mamdani election continues to yield a rich discussion of important issues, at least within the communities I'm involved with. One issue that concerns me from the perspective of a teacher of the history of antisemitism is the widespread characterization of Mamdani as antisemitic, at least within some conservative Jewish and Christian circles. There is no question in my mind that several years ago Mamdani made various statement which could be justifiably considered antisemitic.

Tomorrow, as I write this, there are "off-year" elections throughout the USA, with most eyes focused on the mayoral election in New York City. That's because a young, charismatic Iranian Muslim immigrant has defied all odds to be the leading candidate in the region with the largest number of Jews in the country. About a thousand rabbis signed a statement asking their followers not to vote for Mamdani, which is a tacit endorsement of his opponent, Andrew Cuomo.

One of the most distressing things to me of late is the destruction being wrought on a number of English language words and terms in the current social media frenzy. No word has garnered more negative energy world-wide in recent months than "Zionism." And in the furor, large numbers of people have either forgotten, or never knew, what the word means.

Dear Friends, This will be brief, and hopefully the last message of this sort I need to send out for awhile. As of this week, all restrictions have been lifted on my activities. I've returned to the gym for my usual workout program, and I'm walking normally without "walker" or cane. I'm off all the prescription drugs associated with the knee procedure, so yesterday I was even able to enjoy a beer with dinner!

Dear Friends, It's 5pm as I write this and I just returned from my first post-op appointment. I'm happy to report that the stitches have been removed and everything seems to be on track to a good recovery.  It's also just a couple of hours from the beginning of Yom Kippur, so I also want to use this occasion to wish all my friends who observe the holiday an easy fast. 

Dear Friends, I've updated a few of my friends via email and social sites, but I've neglected my friends here on my blog.  On Friday 9/19 I'm heading over to the hospital to receive a "revision" on my already artificial left knee. The surgeon will decide whether I need a partial or complete replacement when he is able to examine the joint.

I lost one of the most important people in my life a day or so ago. My dear friend, Ken Cohen, succumbed to a vile illness which took him from us all too soon. I met Ken when he enrolled in a Biblical Hebrew course I taught on the campus of Stanford University, around the Fall of 1984. The course was not from Stanford itself, but rather Lehrhaus Judaica, a school for adult Jewish Studies, which began at Berkeley and expanded to teach evening classes on many campuses all over the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dear Friends, I wrote a blog entry today about a topic in Hebrew language. As far as I can see, the Hebrew looks fine when I read it in the blog. But the version I see in email has question marks and other gibberish where the article has Hebrew characters. I would appreciate any feedback from those of you who want to read my blog posts about Hebrew about how easy or difficult you are finding it to navigate these issues.

This topic is one of the more frequently recurring in my Hebrew teaching, the question of the proper pronunciation of the vowel sign qametz: -? Speakers using the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation pronounce every qametz like the “aw” in “awful.” The modern Israeli pronunciation is more complex. In most cases, it it is pronounced “a” as in “father.” But about ten percent of the time, Israelis pronounce it “o” as in “hole.”

We're having another summer of major changes for our Marquette house--which we purchased some years ago as needing no renovations or repairs. Laugh out loud! A couple of years ago we experienced some sewer line blockage, so we called in the plumbers and after a (literal) roto-rooter job, they explained that the lilac bushes along our driveway had invaded the sewer line.

Ever wonder why the main drive on most computers is the C) drive? Did it stand for "C"omputer? No, that would be too simple and logical. The real story is much more amusing. When computers first became small and inexpensive enough for ordinary people to purchase them, the discs that spun to deliver programs and data to the processor were called "floppy" drives because they were made out of flexible materials.

Throughout my academic career I've encountered and dealt with a concept I call deliberate archaization. There seems to be a pervasive notion that the older something is, the more authentic it is. Possibly the most famous example of this is ascribing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, to Moses. The Torah itself never does so, and for many centuries now the realization has come that such an attribution is impossible.

Please forgive any accidental posts which look a bit strange. I'm still doing a little development of the blog, and I may accidentally publish things I don't intend to go out. Apologies in advance, but hopefully things will settle down pretty soon. Jack

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