11 December 2009, Les Vans, Ardèche, France
Background: The Golden Menorah (center), A Klezmer Christmas (splitscreen left), Fiddler on the Roof (splitscreen right)
From: SAGReiss
Date: 15 December 2009
Subject: Return of Son of The
Golden Menorah
Aside from her aversion to
spellcheck (Rose always asks me to lose the fucking red when she's
doing her ABCs in Word), my daughter has just learned that Hebrew is
written from right to left. It wasn't easy. She was reading the text of
Song of Songs 2:1 on the Golden Menorah (in that dreadful Arial font
which fucks up the cantillation marks because I foolishly forgot to
save my document in PDF format before going to the print shop), when I
suggested reading it in the opposite direction, and translated it into
English. She disagreed. It took me a minute, for I couldn't figure out
what to do to convince her, but then I thought of the bilingual Bibles
online, so I stoked up Song
of
Songs 2:1 in English & Hebrew
side-by-side, and mercifully in table format. I just copied it into
Word, put the cursor in the middle of the English text and asked her to
type. Everything worked normally. Then I put the cursor in the middle
of the Hebrew text and again asked her to type. The letters were
incontestably going in the wrong direction. Rose conceded the point, as
she is sceptical (and I would have it no other way) but understands a
powerful argument based on empirical evidence when she sees one.
