I and א

Many years ago I was at the house of some friends, the Mertz family, and I had nothing else to do so Mrs. Mertz suggested I look at the Encyclopedia. It was the first time in my life that I had ever opened an encyclopedia. I happened to open up to the article on the letter I. I learned that it is the ninth letter of the alphabet, a fact I have never forgetten. Except for A, B, C, M, N, and Z, I don't think of the letters in terms of their place in the alphabet.

In Hebrew, letters also stand for numbers. It is quite difficult for me to find my way around in a Hebrew Bible that numbers the chapters with letters. Some Bibles have both. We have one Bible that numbers verses with numbers, except for every fifth verse, which is numbered with a letter. I don't know who thought of that or why.

א Aleph, or a number 1. In lights on signs it can look like an H or an X. In handwriting it looks a bit like a K. In modern Hebrew it takes the place of an A in words from other languages, like Texas, atlas, April or anthropology. Otherwise it is what I call a vowel-holder, which becomes a vowel when you put various dots on it, or a vowel-starter, which comes after a pointed consonant and before another vowel, as in נָאוֹר , one of my new words for today, which means glorious or bright.

I haven't been able to figure out how to get letters to show up in a different font or size on blogspot.

This will be a good day for making banana bread, something I haven't done in two or three years or more.

Psalm 116

What I meant was, bugs in blogspot. G-mail is ok, for the most part. But blogspot is messing up. It took several weeks for them to solve the last problem, so I suppose I'll wait patiently several weeks for them to solve the latest one.

Link to a very nice tune. The words are Psalm 116... What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me, etc.


http://youtu.be/vkPP5UEBhiQ

Bugs

I'm about to give up on g-mail. It's so full of bugs I don't want to mess with it anymore. But neither do I want to start over on something else.

The phone's not working today either. At least not for calling out.

I get a thrill out of certain Hebrew words. Like yirdefuni -- they will follow me. Or col-tagmulohi -- all his benefits. Or qavo qiviti -- waiting, I waited. A few hundred more words, or about 5 years, and I'll be able to read the Psalms. Seems like there ought to be a way to speed that up.

Going to Galilee

We rented a nice yellow car for the trip. This mirror was always in the way of taking pictures.



View from MacDonald's.

Flowers at MacDonald's

The sign says viird qM --- MacDrive.

Sheep and a few goats.

Galilee in the spring.

Bridge

This is my favorite bush. The flower clusters are about an inch across. They don't bloom very long, so I was lucky to get this photo.



Going up one side...


and down the other...


That was quite a feat for me, since I have trouble with high places. The bridge goes over a busy street, and I can't tell you how high it is, but high enough for the fear to build as I walked across. I walked with my eyes on the pavement in front of me, and squinched so as not to see over the sides and see how high I was. If I had met someone on the bridge and had to move to one side that would have been a problem.

Model of Old City

Nice town. But no people, trash, cats, dogs, or even a cactus plant.


Close up of temple.





Pool of Siloam


Home sweet home. But where's my cat?










Shrine of the book, in case I forgot to post this earlier. Contains Dead Sea Scrolls and Aleppo Codex. Al loves this place.

Red Blue Bonnets

You can buy a red variety like this.

Synagogue Music

I have looked at two different systems that use the cantillation points as representing actual musical notes. The results are interesting, but I don't think that was the point of the points. There are similarities, of course, in the way we speak, read, chant and sing.

I even thought of some possibilities for devising my own system of notes from the cantillation points. But I resisted the temptation. It would be very time-consuming. More important is to learn to read the Psalms.

It would be quite suitable and very nice, I think, if congregations could simply read Psalms together, if they don't have tunes for all of them.

Here is a link to some information about synagogue music.

Jewish music - 1. Ancient Hebrew music, 2. The rise
of synagogue song

The synagogue service, as far as I understand, is all written in a book. All the prayers, songs, what is said or done and when, is all there. There are also prayers for about every facet of life. You see people praying (reading prayers out of a book) quite often on the bus or on the street. But to pray extemporaneous prayers is not commonly done.

You also often see here Muslims praying in the park. They stand, kneel down to pray, stand, kneel, etc. 7 times. I wish I felt so free to pray in public. On the other hand, Jesus said to pray in your closet and the Father will reward you openly.