Random nifty things

[xiphias]

1. I got to make a Cosmopolitan at work today. Given the typical Harvard Club membership, this doesn't happen too often. But it appears to be the time of year when they give free or real cheap memberships to recent graduates, so I've had opportunities to make more of the recent frou-frou drinks. I can see why bartenders could get sick of making Cosmos, but they're actually pretty fun if you don't have to make too many.

2. I bought a large-type Complete Artscroll Siddur. Because I have trouble reading Hebrew, and it's easier for me to read the big type. It's exactly the same as Lis's compact Artscroll Siddur, just four times the size. Looking at them I keep thinking, "folio, quarto, octo. . . . " Seriously, you look at the large-print, the standard, and the compact next to each other, and that's what it is -- folio, quarto, octo.

Anyway, this means that Lis and I now have siddurim that have exactly the same words on exactly the same pages, but my words are four times the size of her words, because she can't read stuff that's too big, and I can't read stuff that's too small.

3. I bought an Interlinear-Translation Shabbat and Holiday siddur. The Interlinear prints a line of Hebrew, and then a line of English right below it, with each of the words lined up. I see this as a way to try to learn Hebrew a little better. . . also, it's large-type.

To show how it works, lemme see if I can type things in. This is more or less what the first line of "Modeh Ani" looks like. The first line will be the SPTIberian version of Hebrew (a way of typing Hebrew in ASCII) -- in the book, of course, it's in Hebrew:

+rzxh#               ,Myqw      yx          Klm       ,Kynpl       yn)    hdwm
<    for you     <<  and      < living  < King  << before You    < I give thanks
  have returned    eternal

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I guess you're That Cosmopolitan Guy.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

hello... i've always enjoyed your posts on wierdjews; you seem to know a lot and be able to explain it without sounding condescending or commanding, which is a great quality to have. i have friended you-- hope you do not mind, and no pressure to friend me back. =)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool. I tend to friend back just about everybody who friends me, just because I like to get to know people and stuff, so I've friended you.

Thank you for your compliments. :) I just know lots of random stuff, but I am missing huge chunks of things that I think I SHOULD know -- like, for instance, I read Hebrew really badly, which sucks, because I'm a Hebrew school teacher.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

thanks for friending me back. i can't read hebrew at all yet. i'm so thankful for transliteration. =) it's a lovely learning process for me, though. i'm slow, but i'mexcited, so i think that helps. =)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I was going to point you to a nifty siddur that ArtScroll puts out that's all transliterated (along with Hebrew AND translation, so you can see the Hebrew, know what it means, and be able to pronounce it), but it's Shabbat, and ArtScroll takes their site down during Shabbat and on holidays! So if I remember tonight, I'll see if I can find it and point you to it.

I love ArtScroll, as you can probably guess by the fact that we've got FOUR of their siddurim, because they write EVERYTHING down. I mean, they write down when you bend your knees, and when you bow, and when you put your right hand in, and when you take your right hand out, and when you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. . . no, wait, that's something else. But they've got every single detail you could possibly think of. From an Orthodox perspective, which is not how everybody does it, and that means that you've got to filter for that, if you're not Orthodox. But it's a great resource and reference.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

that sounds like a great link. yes, please do send it my way!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Okay, now that it's after shabbat, this is the siddur I was talking about.

Goljerp's rant about ArtScroll, below, is worth reading. He makes some good points about the fact that ArtScroll is only giving ONE set of traditions and making it sound like it's all universal. But, if you keep that in mind when using it, it can be very useful.

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

thanks a lot for sending me the link. this is a cool website in general. nooooowwww... what to buy, what to buy? =)

have an easy fast, by the way.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And you, and may you be sealed into the Book of Life for a good year.

[goljerp]

Must... resist... urge to rant... about... ArtScroll...

They don't write Everything down. They write down lots of stuff, true, but stuff that they think is important. And, of course, they know better than you, so listen to them already. And they would never even dream of writing about a custom which one particular community followed in such a way that people who didn't know otherwise would think that it was the general, normative custom that all people in all communities follow.

OK, enough ranting.

OW!

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

Cool on the nifty new Siddurim there.
May they be of good service to you.
I love the way older siddurim of mine have the "oily" marks in specific areas fro years of regular use.

That form of ASCII Hebrew as painful to read! Ouch, took me quite a while to figure it out, working back from the English, no-less. I have posted Hebrew in my LJ before, and most browsers will display it properly using some built-in unicode font. But then your source PC has t o have multilingual support to begin with. Here is an example for you: ..

.גמר חתימה טובה לדג-מסור ולאשתו היקרה

[cellio]

I bought my very first siddur because of the size of the print, and before I understood that there were important differences between siddurim and maybe that phrase "nusach ha-Ari" on the cover meant something. :-) But most of the time I can read the Hebrew without a magnifying glass, which isn't true of most of my other siddurim. (That said, I don't use it much now.)

I like the interlinear translations, because my Hebrew comprehension is pretty poor and line-by-line doesn't improve that nearly as well as word-by-word does. A good translation is a learning opportunity. I saw this format for the first time when Artscroll (Mesorah?) sent me an interlinear Pirke Avot in a quest for donations, which succeeded that time because that Pirke Avot is something I would have actually bought if I saw it in a store.