Jewish Stuff

Jul 27, 2007 13:22

So every trip since Israel I have run into Jewish stuff in the countries I visited. I went to China and found a Jewish community center in Shanghai and I went to Ireland and walked to a cemetery in Cork and I saw a sign off in the old part that looked like it was written in Hebrew. I couldn't get all that close to the sign so I snapped a picture ( Read more... )

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loadhan July 27 2007, 21:13:40 UTC
Yeah, I found out last year (while researching Shanghai for a story) about their Jewish population. Made me want to introduce a Jewish side-character...

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biogant July 28 2007, 00:31:19 UTC
Yeah, I got to visit some of the old community centers. there is still a small Jewish community there but I didn't stumble upon them.

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anonymous July 27 2007, 22:42:44 UTC
Transliterated as either "beit" or "bayit olam", depending on whether there's a vowel after the letter (second from the right) that looks like an apostrophe. Bayit means house, beit doesn't really translate, so I'm gonna go with the first one, and olam is joy or happiness. So "House of Joy," which is probably the Hebrew name of the congregation.

-Elianna

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biogant July 28 2007, 00:30:42 UTC
Hrmm are you sure Olam is Joy? Andy (another jewish friend of mine) just translated Olam as Eternity. I'm largely clueless about this so I don't know anything except that fact that the church on my map was a jewish meeting place (which is weird as it was several hundred years old) and it you guys translated the same word differently.

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anonymous July 28 2007, 13:23:10 UTC
Hrm...well, I was cheating with an online translational dictionary via copy-pasting letters from an Israeli news website. It is possible I put in a samech instead of a final mem...they're both sort of square. And his translation certainly rings a bell - as part of the sh'ma, but I'm not sure the word order is really the same between Hebrew and English. I'm gonna try this one more time...and now it tells me that "olam" means world or universe so excuse me while I go *headdesk* because I used to know that...for example from the phrase "tikkun olam" - repairing the world. It was even on the tip of my brain last night, I just couldn't find it. So anyway, there's your answer, finally, "house of the world" or "world house". Enjoy that whole new can of worms. 'Cause I've got no notion what they mean by that.

-Elianna

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faerie_izzy July 28 2007, 21:04:57 UTC
well all of theirs makes more sense than what me and Mike found, according to what we found this means the first word means: house, home ; (poetry) stanza, verse ; school, system ; dynasty, family ; (sport) league ; (computing) byte. And the second means "to be photographed" which doesn't makes any sense. This is the Hebrew we used בית צולם

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faerie_izzy July 28 2007, 21:24:29 UTC
Hank says that the second word is a common name of a funeral home, the house of eternity like your friends said though it could just be the name of the funeral home who made the grave.

Jared says olam which means everything/all.

Mike asked them since house to be photographed doesn't make sense, they were both in AE(Pie) with him.

Its funny there is a company called bet olam jewish funeral you can google them. and on their website they definately have the exact same word that is on the grave. The company says it means eternal home which makes perfect sense

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melster July 31 2007, 19:46:56 UTC
Woot! Yeah, us jews are everywhere... I visited a synagogue in cairo today.

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biogant July 31 2007, 20:31:35 UTC
Wow, really? You know, I honestly thought there would be a law against that sort of thing in Egypt. The whole nation doesn't strike me as exactly the human rights capital of the world. Nor does it strike me as president of the Hebrew Fan Club.

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melster August 2 2007, 22:22:46 UTC
Yup. No law against it -- there's even a big one that still has services from time to time, i hear.

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