What Does it All Mean? Glossary of Jewish & Hebrew Words

From Mazeltot.org

Latke? Mechitza? Mohel? What does it all mean?

Here we offer definitions of some Jewish and Hebrew words you may have heard before. If there's a word you'd like defined, email Josh Gold. For more information about Jewish holidays, terminology and teachings, visit www.myjewishlearning.com.

Aleph-bet: The Hebrew alphabet

Aliyah: The honor of being called up in synagogue to read from the Torah - or - a term used to describe Jewish immigration to Israel

Avodah: Work, often used in reference to work that serves God

Bar/Bat Mitzvah: A 13 year old Jewish boy or girl who is seen as an adult in the eyes of the Jewish community - or - a religious ceremony in which a 13 year old boy or girl reads from the Torah and/or leads a prayer service for the first time

Birkat Hamazon: Grace after meals

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Named for Fiddler on Roof’s Anatevka, new village to house Ukraine Jewish refugees

Fleeing conflict, 100 residents set to move in next month; Kiev rabbi raises $6 million for first phase

By JTA

A prominent Ukrainian rabbi and Israel’s ambassador to Kiev attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a village for Jewish refugees from the conflict raging in eastern Ukraine.

At the ceremony earlier this month near the village of Gnativka, which is located 15 miles from the country’s capital, Israeli Amb. Eliav Belotserkovsky watched as cement trucks poured the foundations for the village, where 100 new residents are expected to settle next month, the village’s initiator, Rabbi Moshe Azman, said Friday.

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Israel and Japan Are Finally Becoming Friends. Why?

After decades of wariness, the two nations are being drawn together by common interests and shared fears.

By Arthur Herman for Mosaic

Walk down a side street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Eshkol and you may came across a group of students chatting loudly in Hebrew as they review their Bible lessons of the day. Hardly an extraordinary sight in Israel—except that these aren’t Israelis. They’re young Japanese on student visas who have assumed hybrid names like Asher Sieto Kimura and Suzana Keiren Mimosa. And they’re Makuyas: members of a Japanese religious group that’s been fervently supportive of Israel since 1948.

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‘Commie Camp’ Documentary Captures Camp Kinderland’s Idealism, and Its Imperfections

Once a utopian getaway for children of socialists and left-wing organizers, the camp remains an essential haven for ‘weird Jews’

By Nona Willis Aronowitz for Tablet

A 12-year-old professes his love for the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton. A middle-schooler defines the “buffer zone” mandated around an abortion clinic, a regulation won by the Center for Constitutional Rights. A 9-and-a-half-year-old explains that Hannah Senesh “went to Pakistan during World War II, and she parachuted into Hungary and tried to save her country, but she got caught by the Nazis and was killed.”

These are a few of the slightly dorky, very adorable, comically precocious city kids at the heart of Commie Camp, a new documentary about a Jewish socialist summer camp in the Berkshires called Camp Kinderland, premiering June 28 at VisionFest. OK, so the kids get a few facts wrong (Hannah Senesh went to Palestine, not Pakistan). But, in the words of Katie Halper, a Kinderland veteran and the film’s director: “How many female anti-fascist paratroopers who suffered capture, torture, and death in an attempt to free her country from Nazi invasion can you name?”

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The Penniless Immigrant Behind a Hot Dog Empire

By Zachary Solomon for Jewniverse

Coney Island is famous for its seashores, sideshows, and salty breezes. But, of course, it’s also famous for its hot dogs—Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, that is. You may know it as the site of the similarly famous gut-clogging hot-dog eating contest.

Just in time for the iconic Brooklyn hot-doggery’s centennial is Famous Nathan, a new documentary by Lloyd Handwerker, grandson of Nathan Handwerker—yes, that Nathan.

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Lilith, Lady Flying in Darkness

The most notorious demon of Jewish tradition becomes a feminist hero

By Rabbi Jill Hammer for MyJewishLearning.com

“Half of me is beautiful

but you were never sure which half.”

            Ruth Feldman, “Lilith”

Lilith is the most notorious demon in Jewish tradition. In some sources, she is conceived of as the original woman, created even before Eve, and she is often presented as a thief of newborn infants. Lilith means “the night,” and she embodies the emotional and spiritual aspects of darkness: terror, sensuality, and unbridled freedom. More recently, she has come to represent the freedom of feminist women who no longer want to be “good girls.”

Biblical and Talmudic Tales of Lilith
The story of Lilith originated in the ancient Near East,where a wilderness spirit known as the “dark maid” appears in the Sumerian myth “The descent of Inanna” (circa 3000 BCE). Another reference appears in a tablet from the seventh century BCE found at Arslan Tash, Syria which contains the inscription: “O flyer in a dark chamber, go away at once, O Lili!”

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The Life and Death of Steven Sotloff, Part 2

A reporter’s friends use Facebook to try and save his life: Driven by a growing sense that the U.S. government could not or would not save Sotloff from captivity, a group of family members, colleagues, and Jewish communal leaders coalesced into a ragtag—and tragically unsuccessful—rescue effort.

By Jonathan Zalman for Tablet Magazine

This is part 2 of The Life and Death of Steven Sotloff. Read part 1 here.

***

A Year in Captivity

Late one Saturday last fall, I met Gregg Roman, the director of the community relations council for the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, in the lobby lounge of the DoubleTree hotel in midtown Manhattan. Roman, 29, was in town to attend a meeting of the board of directors for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. He and Sotloff met as students at the IDC, in Herzliya, Israel, while Roman was trying out for the debate society.

“It’s not enough for us to learn about [the Middle East] in class,” Sotloff would say to Roman as they puffed away at Romeo y Julieta cigars and took in the view from his friend’s apartment—Lebanon to the north, Jordan to the east, Egypt and Gaza to the south. “We have to go there to really understand what’s going on.”

On his way toward my table, Roman ran into Ronald Halber, the executive director of the Jewish Community Council of greater Washington, and invited him to sit with us. Halber, I was told, was the main point of contact for all governmental and Jewish media relations for the family of Alan Gross during his imprisonment in Cuba. “That could be your next story,” he said.

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