The Beauty of Shalom1. א The Semitic languages belong to a group whose name can be traced back to Noah’s oldest son Shem.
2. ב Hebrew, a Semitic language, was the language of the Jewish people in biblical times.
3. ג Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew.
4. ד Hebrew is read from
right to left, not
left to right as in English.
5. ה Our English letters sit on a horizontal baseline, whereas Hebrew characters hang down from an imaginary line above, like garments on a clothesline.
6. ו The Hebrew alphabet (
aleph-bet) has twenty two characters beginning with aleph and bet.
7. ז All the Hebrew characters are consonants.
8. ח There are no vowels in the Hebrew language.
9. ט Hebrew has no characters representing numbers. Letters are used instead.
10. י Developed around the 8th century, small symbols called vowel points were used with the consonents in some writings.
11. כ Hebrew has a large number of three consonant or triconsonantal words.
12. ל Ancient Hebrew was spoken with the verb placed before the subject. Modern Hebrew places the subject first.
13. מ There are two genders—masculine and feminine—which are found in the inflection of the verbs and nouns.
14. נ Hebrew began to disappear as a spoken tongue among the Jews after they were defeated by the Babylonians in 586.
15. ס Well before the time of Jesus, Hebrew had been replaced by Aramaic as the Jewish spoken vernacular, although it was preserved as the language of the Jewish religion.
16. ע From 70 AD when the dispersion of the Jews from Palestine began, until modern times, Hebrew has remained the Jewish language of literature, religion, and learning.
17. פ The oldest extant example of Hebrew writing dates from the 11th or 10th century.
18. צ The Jews adapted the Aramaic writing and evolved from it a script called Square Hebrew, which is the source of modern Hebrew printing.
19. ק Most modern Hebrew handwritten text uses a cursive script which was developed more recently.
20.
ר At the end of the 19th century, the Zionist movement brought about the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, which culminated in its designation as an official tongue of the state of Israel in 1948.
21.
ש The Hebrew word
shalom means peace, and signifies welfare of every kind including security, contentment, sound health, prosperity, friendship, peace of mind and heart—as opposed to the dissatisfaction and unrest caused by evil.
22.
ת Add your good reason to “heart” Hebrew here ____________________.
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Information Source. Photos: bondidwhat & susan_d_p (
Flickr)
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Do you love Hebrew too? Why?
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