A Still Small Voice
After living in Israel for 5 years, the Tephilot in my Rosh Hashana Machzor took on a whole new meaning for me.
Literally.
The words came alive because I was able to understand them. They were no longer just prayers in Hebrew but prayers that I could actually comprehend.
According to some linguists, the spoken Hebrew language declined in usage after the Destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and was only used in study and prayer after the Mishnaic period in 200 CE. After this period the common language for the Jewish people was Aramaic or Greek, depending on where they lived. Over the last 2000 years Diaspora Jews spoke 36 different Judeo-Native languages, such as Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Portugese, Judeo-Georgian and Jewish Hungarian. Many articles have been published about the death of Yiddish after the Holocaust.
Most linguistic scholars claim that after 200 CE, Hebrew usage declined, except for prayer and was considered a dead language.
The two most popular languages at the time, Classical Greek and Latin, also met a similar fate in time. It is believed that Classical Greek usage ended around 400 CE and Classical Latin usage ended with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. Classical Greek slowly evolved into Modern Greek and Classical Latin evolved into the Romance Languages of French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. But by 500 CE Classical Latin and Hebrew were only used as “holy” languages, designated for prayer.
However the difference between the Catholic Church’s use of Latin in Prayer and Judaism’s use of Hebrew lies in the fundamental difference between the religions. In the Catholic Church, only the clerics learned and understood Latin. In Judaism children were encouraged to be literate and anyone who studied Torah knew the language. The Catholic Church nurtured an illiterate society. A society that could not ask questions. Judaism nurtured a society that prayed, learned and questioned.
Several years ago I attended a wedding in a Church while the priest was saying Mass. At he end of the service he recited the words “Benedictus, benedictus, benedictus”. I turned to the person next to me and asked what the priest said in that prayer. The answer was “No idea”.
As I contemplated the words “who by fire, who by sword’, the words leapt out of the page and rose up to the heavens as their meaning became ever so clear.
The Hebrew language is more alive than ever.
The Yiddish language is more alive than ever.
Yiddish is thriving in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Antwerp, Leeds, Jerusalem and Bnai Brak.
Unlike the person standing next to me in that church, more and more of us understand the meaning of “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh” as we persevere, rebuild and continue to flourish.
May we all be inscribed……..
