When Torah Bright won gold for Australia at the Winter Olympics in the woman’s snowboarding halfpipe event (this is what it is),  quite a few people kvelled, and not only Australians.  She spoke very well too.

Evidently, she is from a Mormon Family who chose her name for its Biblical significance

This was in contrast to the spelling of the words “Tora, Tora, Tora”  of the film depicting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.  Tora was of the code-word  were used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved (tora is Japanese for “tiger”, but in this case, “To” is the initial syllable of the Japanese word totsugeki, meaning “charge” or “attack”, and “ra” is the initial syllable of raigeki, meaning “torpedo attack”).

In the Encyclopedia Judaica, it is stated that the word “Torah” in Hebrew “is derived from the root ירה which in the hifil conjugation means “to teach” (cf. Lev 10:11). The meaning of the word is therefore “teaching,” “doctrine,” or “instruction”; the commonly accepted “law” gives a wrong impression.”

More about the Torah here and here

The author of the enjoyable and instructive website Balashon is currently discussing the Hebrew Linguistic aspects of nuts ( Who could forget the Egozi Bar!).  The author also mentions the etymology of the walnut, known as Egoz Hamelech (the king’s nut) or the more visual  Egoz Hamoach (the brain nut) complete with comparison picture of a walnut and a brain.  Earlier in the month,  for Tu Bishvat, the Shaked (almond) was contemplated .. Shaked also means “to work diligently”.

Thinking locally, the word Shaked is a reminder of Shkedia Coffee Beans coated in Bittersweet Chocolate from Shkedia Geva - a highly recommended Sydney supermarket purchase.

Balashon also has a good take on words associated with Purim.    I was interested to learn that  “hamentaschen did not originally refer to Haman (and therefore the Hebrew אוזני המן oznei haman - came much later.) These pastries were originally called “mahn-taschen”. Mohn means “poppy” in German, and tasch is a pocket. When you add the Hebrew definitive article ha, they become ha-mahn-taschen, which is easy to associate with Haman.  Further, the word “tasch” comes from Middle High German tasche, and earlier from Old High German tasca. Tasca is related to the English word “task”, and both are related to “tax”. What’s the connection between task, tax and pocket? The Online Etymology Dictionary explains as follows: “amount of work imposed by some authority,” to “payment for that work,” to “wages,” to “pocket into which money is put,” to “any pocket.” According to Balashon “A connection between Haman and taxes can be seen in the more recent custom to boo at the reading of the word mas מס - tax in the Megila, the same way as Haman is booed.”  (nb even not on Purim, some might boo at the mention of taxes!) Read about Purim

For any discussion on the modern Hebrew language, it is important to include  Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, and an important early Zionist leader.
He was born in 1858 in Lithuania, where his witnessing of the struggle of the Balkan nations for liberation planted in his mind the idea of the revival of the Jewish people on its ancestral soil. He felt deeply that if the Bulgarians, who were not an ancient, classical people, could demand and obtain a state of their own, then the Jews, the People of the Book and the heirs of historic Jerusalem, deserved the same.

He maintained that the Jewish people, like all other peoples, had a historic land and a historic language.  What was needed was a national movement that would restore Israel to its land and its language.  In a preface to his dictionary he wrote – “in those days it was as if the heavens had suddenly opened, and a clear, incandescent light flashed before my eyes, and a mighty inner voice sounded in my ears: the renascence of Israel on its ancestral soil.”

Ben-Yehuda felt that the Jewish people should learn from the oppressed European peoples that were fighting for political freedom and national revival, and stated that the Jewish people must establish a community in Eretz Israel that would serve as a focal point for the entire people, so that even those Jews who would remain in the Diaspora would know that they belong to a people that dwells in its own land and has its own language and culture.

In Paris, he enrolled in a teaching college where he was inspired by the lectures of Joseph Halevy who, as early as the 1860’s, had advocated for the coinage of new Hebrew words.  He also met the Jerusalem scholar AM Luncz, who spoke Hebrew with Sephardi pronunciation and told him that the various Jewish communities in Jerusalem were able to converse only in Sephardi Hebrew.  These contacts reinforced Ben-Yehuda’s opinion that the Jews could only be united people in their own land if their children revived Hebrew as the spoken language.

In 1881 he arrived in Jaffa where, famously, he announced to his new wife, Deborah, that henceforth they would only converse in Hebrew. They established the first Hebrew-speaking home, and their son, Ben-Zion (later called Itamar Ben-Avi) was raised as the first modern Hebrew Speaking child. According to Ben-Yehuda, this was an important symbolic event for the revival, because, with a child in the house, parents and visitors would have to speak naturally to him on the most everyday topics, all in Hebrew. And when the child would finally begin to speak on his own, Ben-Yehuda would have living proof that a complete revival of the language was, indeed, possible.

Ben-Yehuda was said to have refused to let his son be exposed to other languages during childhood, and once reprimanded his wife, after he caught her singing a Russian lullaby to the child. The fact that there was a child in the house accentuated the need to find appropriate Hebrew words for the mundane things of everyday life. Thus, new Hebrew words were coined by Ben-Yehuda for objects such as doll, ice-cream, jelly, omelette, handkerchief, towel, bicycle, and hundreds more. As the child grew, so did Hebrew, both in vocabulary and in naturalness of expression. Indeed, Ben-Yehuda and his Hebrew-speaking family became a living legend, an embodiment of the revival for others to emulate.

Ben-Yehuda adopted several plans of action. The main ones were three-fold, and they can be summarized as “Hebrew in the Home,” “Hebrew in the School,” and “Words, Words, Words.”
He helped ensure that lessons in school were taught in Hebrew.  After writing for a few years in the local paper, Hahavatzelet, he also began to publish his own newspaper Hatzvi, in 1884, to serve as an instrument for teaching adults, through  its content and its language.

Before his wife, Deborah, died, she encouraged her sister, Hemdah, to marry Ben-Yehudah.  Hemdah did so, and helped him greatly in his work (see photo - Ben-Yehuda and his wife Hemdah).  At first, Ben-Yehuda tried to befriend the religious Orthodox Jews, but they sensed that for Ben-Yehuda, Hebrew was not a holy tongue, but a secular, national language.  They began be suspicious and more critical, especially when he later wrote columns against traditional customs.

Ben-Yehuda prevailed upon Herbert Samuel, the British High  Commissioner, to declare Hebrew one of the 3 official languages of the country.

Ben Yehuda’s  major achievements included:
1. The revival of spoken Hebrew.  He was convinced that a living Hebrew, spoken by the people in its own land, was indispensible to the political and cultural rebirth of the nation. Indeed, the Hebrew language revival can be considered one of the truly outstanding socio-linguistic events of modern times.
2. The creation of a simple, popular style in Hebrew literature – he fought against inflated rhetoric, and demanded simplicity and concreteness.  To this end, he translated some stories into this Hebrew style.
3. He was the first to make a regular, systematic practice of coining Hebrew words..this was a constant demand.
4. His dictionary complemented his revival of the Hebrew language, and it was arranged in the manner of modern European language dictionaries.

Cecil Roth said that before BenYehuda, Jews could speak Hebrew;  after him, they did.  It was certainly not true, however, that Hebrew was not used.  Indeed, at the time of Ben-Yehuda’s first article in 1879, it was estimated that “over 50 percent of all male Jews were able to understand the Pentateuch, the daily prayers, etc. and some 20 percent could read a Hebrew book of average difficulty, allowing for a much higher proportion in eastern Europe, north Africa and Yemen, and a very much lower one in western countries.”

To help him with his dictionary, and to solve problems connected with the form and type of Hebrew and problems of terminology, pronunciation, spelling and punctuation, Ben-Yehuda founded the Hebrew Language Council in 1890. The Council was the forerunner of today’s Hebrew Language Academy, the supreme arbiter and authority on all matters pertaining to the Hebrew language. Recently there were complaints that funding to the Academy has been reduced as a cost cutting measure.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda died from TB at the age of 64, and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. His funeral was attended by 30,000 people.  Through his revival of the dynamic Hebrew language, his legacy very much lives on as one of the modern day giants of Israel and the Jewish people.

References include: Jewish Virtual Library, article by Jack Fellman;  Encyclopedia Judaica; Wickipedia.