The siren should be going off in one minute.
Apologies in advance to people on my friends list who don't speak Hebrew.
In the spirit of Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day--which is nothing like the American version), I have a question. For anyone who is familiar with the song "HaKotel,"1 you know the second verse, the one about the paratrooper standing by the kotel? My friend Navah and I were discussing it, and it turns out we disagree on what it means. Her understanding involves what seems like a grammatical error--but on the other hand, she's Israeli-born, so she's obviously more familiar with slang phrases than I am, and there are plenty of slang phrases in any language (as far as I know) that involve grammatical errors.
The paragraph in question is the following:אמר לי אינני דומע
ושב להשפיל מבטים
אך סבא שלי אלוהים היודע
קבור כאן בהר הזיתים
Now, according to my interpretation, the soldier is not religious, but he's saying that his grandfather was (since he "knew God"), and the kotel has meaning for him through his grandfather. And according to Navah's interpretation, it has nothing to do with whether or not the soldier is religious, and when he says "אלוהים היודע" he's just using it for emphasis, as in "God knows that my grandfather is buried on Har Hazetim."
Does anyone know which one of us is right?
1. HaKotel literally means "the wall;" it refers to the Western Wall.
In the spirit of Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day--which is nothing like the American version), I have a question. For anyone who is familiar with the song "HaKotel,"1 you know the second verse, the one about the paratrooper standing by the kotel? My friend Navah and I were discussing it, and it turns out we disagree on what it means. Her understanding involves what seems like a grammatical error--but on the other hand, she's Israeli-born, so she's obviously more familiar with slang phrases than I am, and there are plenty of slang phrases in any language (as far as I know) that involve grammatical errors.
The paragraph in question is the following:אמר לי אינני דומע
ושב להשפיל מבטים
אך סבא שלי אלוהים היודע
קבור כאן בהר הזיתים
Now, according to my interpretation, the soldier is not religious, but he's saying that his grandfather was (since he "knew God"), and the kotel has meaning for him through his grandfather. And according to Navah's interpretation, it has nothing to do with whether or not the soldier is religious, and when he says "אלוהים היודע" he's just using it for emphasis, as in "God knows that my grandfather is buried on Har Hazetim."
Does anyone know which one of us is right?
1. HaKotel literally means "the wall;" it refers to the Western Wall.