![\"Hebrew](\"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/alaph.jpg\")
<\/a>Hebrew Alphabet<\/p><\/div>
\nIt wasn\u2019t love at first sight for me and Jerusalem. Oh no. I fell in love with my beautiful city long before laying eyes on her for the first time. I knew full well that her golden beauty would enchant me, that I would leave my heart in her tiny cobbled alleyways. Of course it was different from what I\u2019d imagined. Isn\u2019t it always? But all in all, I loved Jerusalem as much as I thought I would. And on some days, I loved her even more. <\/p>\n
But my love-affair with the Hebrew language started off slightly different. Probably because I had no expectations. And no clue, for that matter. My vocabulary extended to a tentative \u201cmazal tov\u201d and the lyrics of \u201cShalom aliechem\u201d (which, in hindsight, I had all wrong). Hebrew and I didn\u2019t fall in love at first sight \u2013 or first sound if you want to get all technical about it. It was a slower courtship. At first the signs were subtle. I\u2019d catch myself swooning over the hypnotic guttural rhythms. Over the rise and fall of staccato sounds punctuated by passionate hand gestures. But above all, my heart skipped a beat at the soft purring \u201cr\u201d that rolled from the tongue like a contented cat. Oh I fell in love with Hebrew slowly, cautiously. But once I fell, I fell hard. There was no use denying it: I\u2019d become hooked on Hebrew.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t simply a passing fascination with the strange sounds that had become so familiar to me. Probably because Hebrew isn\u2019t just another language. See, I started noticing the fingerprints, or rather, the whisper of God, in the ancient sounds, in the words and phrases of Modern Hebrew. <\/p>\n
My first introduction came wrapped in one of God\u2019s names. I\u2019m your typical girly girl. Romantic heart. Enamoured by epic love stories. Especially the kind where the brave hero defeats the forces of evil to rescue his heroine. Which is why my heart sighs every time I hear God calling Himself the Lord of Hosts. Because a host is an army. And the heavenly hosts? Well, that would be the army of heaven, of angels then. And if God calls Himself the Lord of Hosts, then that makes Him the Supreme Commander of the Armies of Heaven. A Supreme Commander, no less, Who battled the forces of evil to rescue us, His beloved. <\/p>\n
All well and good, but what does that have to do with Hebrew? A lot actually. Because way back in Biblical times, God wouldn\u2019t have introduced Himself in English. He\u2019d have used Hebrew, the language spoken since the beginning of time. So as the Supreme Commander of the Armies of Heaven, God would have introduced Himself as Adonai Tseva\u2019ot. <\/p>\n
Which brings me back to Modern Hebrew. And the fingerprints and whispers of God still so evident in the everyday words and phrases. Because today, the Hebrew equivalent for Israel Defence Force (IDF) is Tzava Hagana leIsrael. If tzava is Hebrew for army. And hagana means defence. Then the direct translation is much as you\u2019d expect: the army of defence to Israel. But back to the first word: tzava or army. Because the plural of tzava is tseva\u2019ot. Which means armies or hosts. Which is exactly the same word used when God introduces Himself as Adonai Tseva\u2019ot, the Lord of Hosts.<\/p>\n
Am I trying to draw an analogy, to show a parallel between the two concepts? Absolutely not. See, the point I\u2019m making is much less intellectual. It borders on the ordinary, the routine, the blink-and-you-miss it. Because woven into the everyday words and phrases of Modern Hebrew I see the fingerprints and the whisper of God. In the hypnotic guttural rhythms, in the rise and fall of the staccato sounds and in the soft purring \u201cr\u201d like a contented cat I am reminded. That God was there. He was. That God is still here. And that true to His Word, He will always continue to be there.<\/p>\n
Which is why I\u2019m hooked on Hebrew. Well, it\u2019s one of the reasons anyway. And the other? Ah, now that one is all about prophecy, all about how God remains faithful and true to His word. Because Modern Hebrew is the fulfilment of a promise. It\u2019s another piece in a grand and majestic puzzle. And it\u2019s another piece of evidence. That if God said it, He will also do it. To be continued\u2026 <\/p>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Lilly Cohen It wasn\u2019t love at first sight for me and Jerusalem. Oh no. I fell in love with my beautiful city long before laying eyes on her for the first time. I knew full well that her golden beauty would enchant me, that I would leave my heart in her tiny cobbled alleyways. more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[524],"tags":[223,135,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-2497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-just-thought","8":"tag-hebrew","9":"tag-israel-news","10":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions\/2499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}