Comments on: Happy Purim

By: chazarmaveth

chazarmaveth — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:41:07 +0000

dude! me + moshe were looking at parshas noach, we saw a character whose name (in hebrew) was spelled “chet-tzadi-reish-mem-vav-taf,” translated (by artscroll) as “hazarmaveth.” moshe’s like, “death pig?” it was a joke. it stuck. zehu.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:01:39 +0000

Some of the Arabic-inflected dialects of Hebrew also differentiated between gimel with a dagesh and without. So, were you making kiddush in Yemen, you might hear “borei pri ha-jafen,” which I think is kind of cool.

I don’t know if that’s true to ancient Hebrew or not, but the fact that the dageshim were put there during the Tiberian period indicates that a lot of the letters at least at one time had multiple pronunciations.

By: T_M

T_M — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:49:38 +0000

I’d respond but suddenly I’m all tongue-tied.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:42:04 +0000

Yeah…”chazar” means returned or repeated, so it’s “death repeated.”

As far as the “th” in “mavet,” it’s technically a more correct transliteration for a tav without a dagesh, which is slightly different sound than a tav with a dagesh. I mean, if you’re really serious about speaking Temani-esque Hebrew. The tav-b’li-dagesh, instead of the Ashkenazi “s,” is actually a “t” sound made against the roof of the mouth with the tongue scooped, like a lot of the sounds in Arabic. It makes the surrounding vowels sound “hollow.” The best way in English to transliterate it is with a “th,” since it kinda sounds like that (although the dalet without a dagesh sounds more like a “th”). It used to be the standard way of transliterating Sephardi Hebrew, which is why you get things like “Beth Israel” or something like that.

Boy, I bet you didn’t really need to know that.

By: T_M

T_M — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:13:09 +0000

Wait a minute, chazar maveth is supposed to be pig of death? Isn’t it chazir mavet?

By: chazarmaveth

chazarmaveth — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:31:15 +0000

well, good. anything christian is better than JFJ. i agree with michael... we need to make us some cinematic talmud talez -- arba nichn'su l'pardes, tanur d'bar achnai, the story of Elazar ben Dordya (famed debaucherer/last-minute-teshuva-maker)... all dem aggadas deserve epic treatment. dina, i hope you are planning on blogging your story to us...? you'd be a welcome Special Literary Correspondent to The Pig of Death if ever the fancy struck you...

By: Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 05:33:32 +0000

Haveil Havalim #15 – The Purim Carnival!
Mirty Gets Married provides us with, among other things, the Unitarian view of Purim as well as her own take on the holiday. Purim easy? Try making 30 sets of Shalach Manos for your children’s teachers and friends! And delivering…

By: ck

ck — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:57:57 +0000

“falafel sandwich?” is that what the kids are calling it these days?

By the way, the movie was produced by Latter Day Saints – yup. Mormons.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:14:07 +0000

I’ll be seeing ck in two months. I guess he’ll owe me. Although, hey, ck, if you want to give me instead of that “kiss” a “falafel sandwich,” that’s totally cool with me.

By: T_M

T_M — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:07:07 +0000

Michael, you are a genius! If ck were here, I’d send him right over to give you a big kiss!

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:44:12 +0000

This has happened to me before in WordPress…I don’t know if you have the same problem, but it’s worth a shot. In your list of words that the spam filter catches and sends to the moderation queue, if there’s a blank line anywhere (like at the bottom of the list), it will catch all comments posted.

By: Dina

Dina — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:35:36 +0000

Ah. So that’s why, TM.

By: T_M

T_M — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:33:45 +0000

I don’t know what’s going on, Michael, but it’s annoying as hell. No posts are coming through without moderation right now.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:31:51 +0000

Seriously, what’s with you people’s moderation queue? Has it gone w(h)acky, or do you just not like me?

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:30:53 +0000

Seriously, though, it was a five minute trailer that revealed essentially nothing about the subject of the movie. What gives?

Here’s a gem from the IMDB board about said movie:

“The movie looks to be visually stunning. I could also sense the annointing of God on the movie. I am very excited for it to come out and I pray that it will be a blessing to all who see it.”

If the anointing of G-d is on that movie, the man upstairs is slackin’ big time.

Whoa, TM, I never called this a Hollywood production. I have eyes, chabibi.

Yeah, Dina, I don’t know what’s up with the Elders. I mean, after the Passion made 45,457,984,000,000,000,000,000,000 Jesus bucks, you’d think people would have been all over the whole “Biblical epic” thing. And if it was Jewish, it would be so much better! Where’s Spielberg when you need him?

By: Dina

Dina — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:13:03 +0000

shh, Michael, I’m working on that screenplay. Actually, I’m not yet but I will be as soon as I finish editing the short story I wrote about the Maccabees for my fiction workshop class! But you raise a good point–where’re those Elders when we need them? Seriously, their job is so deficient I’m actually glad we’re almost ready to take over.

By: T_M

T_M — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:12:59 +0000

Um, this doesn't look like a "Hollywood" production. It does sound pretty bad though. It is real, however.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:54:22 +0000

Wow, if that’s, uh, actually genuine and not someone’s idea of a funny joke (wasn’t that Omar Sharif shot taken from Hidalgo or something?), it looks like it should be pretty bad. You know, here’s what I don’t get: we own Hollywood. Why can’t we make Biblical movies a la “The Passion,” only make them, you know, expunged of references to Jesus and cognizant of the fact that Middle Eastern/Asian people 2500 years ago did not have straight blond hair? I mean, think about it: an entirely Jewish production of, say, the Makhabi revolt. It would be frickin’ sweet.

By: chazarmaveth

chazarmaveth — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:39:45 +0000

right on holmes, thanx for the double-props, and a wonderful Purim to all at jewlicious…
i have a sneaking suspicion that JFJ is behind this mysterious project… the details are so vague, the titles on the 4-minute (?!) trailer look like they were made with iMovie, and the headshot of John Rhys-Davies is a picture of Gimli-son-of-Gloin! will this be the ultimate LOTR/Tanach crossover film? and what’s up with “volunteers” for the movie? those are usually called “production assistants,” not “volunteers.” people volunteer at the church, not on a movie set. it is obviously targeted at jews, but i’ll bet it’s spiced with all kinds of little references to big daddy J — plus, if this was being made by honest-to-goodness yidden, we all woulda heard about it last year, when the site went up…

By: T_M

T_M — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:27:50 +0000

Here's a little Purim spiel.