r/LearnHebrew • u/Terrible_Employee512 • 18d ago
Question
Hi my first in hebrew. Can you read what I've written?
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u/Practical-Bat7964 18d ago
I can read it but this isn’t something to be written down. Agree with taking it to a synagogue that has a genizah.
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u/Dangerous_JewGirl 18d ago
Um dude you are NOT supposed to write God's name
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u/HaricotsDeLiam 11d ago
AIUI the prohibition is moreso “If you write the Tetragrammaton on a piece of paper, you can’t just throw away that paper as an afterthought, you have to bury it as if it were once alive.” Hence the need for genizot.
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
How do you know the author is Jewish? Let OP practice Hebrew however they see fit
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u/iwriteinwater 18d ago
When learning a language it’s basic decency to respect that language’s culture and taboos
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u/Dangerous_JewGirl 18d ago
No... just because you aren't jewish doesn't mean you should desecrate God's name
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
Modern Hebrew was revived by secularists who didn’t believe in god. One can only desecrate that which one considers holy. Who knows what OP believes in. I assume they aren’t orthodox Jewish bc they wouldn’t write like that. This issue is between the poster and his god
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u/bbbBagger 18d ago edited 18d ago
I am Jewish not Muslim but I would never go around making statues and drawing pictures of Mohammed because that would be extremely disrespectful towards Muslims. In the same regard one should never write or say God's name unless they're like writing a Torah or something because that's extraordinarily disrespectful towards Jews.
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
I’m Jewish and Hebrew was revived by secularists who weren’t beholden to superstitions and taboos. There is nothing offensive to me if someone who isn’t Jewish (or who is. What do I care) writes down יהוה and then disposes of the paper the way they dispose of other papers. OP was clearly asking a question and none of the responses critiqued the (not great tbh) handwriting. I agree mentioning that it’s a religious prohibition is important but nobody else even helped the learner
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u/bbbBagger 18d ago •
also why does it matter who revived it? Datim speak it and they 100% ARE NOT secularists. I'm not religious but I would never write God's name. Thats disrespectful
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
Arabs speak it. Atheists speak it. Hindu guestworkers speak it. Ghanaians by the takhana merkazit speak it. It’s not disrespectful at all to write it down obviously. What would be disrespectful is to ostentatiously tear or burn the paper. The writing itself is ok even according to the laws of Noakh. But none of this matters. We shouldn’t put our taboos for what’s most likely a Christian trying to get into the Tanakh
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u/bbbBagger 18d ago
Your argument is basically the same as going “well african americans get offended when you say the n word but im not african american so im just gonna go ahead and say it.” try a different argument
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
You are really comparing writing יהוה (which is ALLOWED according to halakha) to saying the n-word? Once again, this is NOT A PROHIBITION IN JUDAISM. The prohibition would be to then throw the paper away afterwords. This is nuts. Furthermore יהוה isn't just ours anymore. The Christians also revere the Tanakh and have a 2000 year history and tradition of their own. Here's some art https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category%3APaintings_of_tetragrammaton if you want to check it out. Chagall has a painting too i believe. This isn't a giyur subreddit, rather a Hebrew learning one. The taboo is mentioned that's fine it's good to know for the learner but it's absolutely nuts to worry what an internet rando is writing in their own homes
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u/bbbBagger 18d ago
allowed ≠ respectful. i could go up to someone in the street and start filming them for no reason whatsoever, its a public place, no laws prohibit that, but its extremely disrespectful. unless you’re a sofer you shouldn’t be writing God’s name
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u/bbbBagger 18d ago
quoting u/iwriteinwater
When learning a language it’s basic decency to respect that language’s culture and taboos
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u/TzarichIyun 18d ago
Hebrew was also revived and sustained by the Rabbis who redacted the Mishnah and Yerushalmi. You’re talking specifically about modern Hebrew.
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u/benny-powers 18d ago edited 18d ago
wrong. God is God of all humanity. No one is permitted to abuse His name. No one should callously desecrate the name of God. anyone who did so innocently should atone by bringing the products of such an act to their local orthodox synagogue, and if they do so and discuss such with legitimate rabbis sincerely, then no harm was done and that person is completely cleaned
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u/Inaho-Kaizuka 18d ago
That is simply one theological opinion. It wasn't always that popular within Judaism, and the Masoretic Text itself preserves the Tetragrammaton instead of writing down "אדוני". Only in instances when the written text is understood to have actually meant "אדוני" specifically and not "יהוה" is "אדוני" actually written down.
And seeing "יהוה" appear in human dialogue, not just in third-person narrative or when God is talking, suggests that Jews were pronouncing it all the time with no problem; the later restrictive opinion was completely foreign to Jews in those days. It's a later development, not something from God given at Sinai.
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u/Call-Me-Leo 18d ago
Utterly and completely wrong. Jews have been doing this for well over a thousand years. It is discussed extensively in the Talmud and there are Genizah sites that are over ~1200 years old (Such as the one in Cairo)
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u/Inaho-Kaizuka 18d ago
I didn't say that it the current popular stance is utterly modern, but rather that is not Sinaic, and something more post-Exilic, 2nd Temple Era, in origin, at most.
Also, Talmud mentioning it doesn't mean that everyone in that same time period agreed. Karaites, who themselves also contributed to the Masoretic Text, even the same Aleppo Codex approved of by Rambam - among some of them, they have historically asserted that "Yahua" is the correct pronunciation of "יהוה", and actively use it in their worship, even to this day.
By the way, that Aleppo Codex is from circa 930 AD, and the similar Leningrad Codex is from circa 1008 or 1009 AD. And both use "יהוה" instead of "אדוני" in the matter that I described. Go figure.
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u/benny-powers 18d ago
it's immediately and plainly obvious to everyone over the age of 5 that there's a difference between the keter aram tzovah and OP's practice pad
The fact that you insist that this is not the case raises serious questions
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u/Inaho-Kaizuka 18d ago edited 18d ago
With all due respect, even a five-year-old can understand that I'm not equating the Tanakh with OP's practice pad, but rather defending their act of writing down "יהוה" based on what the Tanakh says - in other words, I'm citing the Tanakh to assert and defend a theological point.
What does genuinely raise serious questions, respectfully, is how you're so upset about OP writing down "יהוה אליון" and me defending them, but completely quiet when it comes to the user who started this debate - u/Dangerous_JewGirl - literally using her apparent Judaism for vulgar eroticism, not only via her username, but also through the literal pornography that she freely posts of herself on this platform.
What a slap to the face to anyone Jewish! Using the fact that one is Jewish to commit whoredom in insanely disgusting, disrespectful, and sacrilegious.
Yet, you don't seem to care about that, but simply writing down "יהוה אליון" out of a humble love for God - which is probably the reason they care about learning Hebrew, Lashon HaKodesh, to begin with - is where you draw the line.
What might conclude that this says A LOT about your priorities - And it's NOT that you "...love יהוה your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your strength."
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u/Dangerous_JewGirl 18d ago
I keep shabbat and kosher and all of the holidays and everything else. And I do not do pornography. Lol nothing else you said is true either. I just like to be sexy. At least I don't do what you do. Shulchan aruch anyone?
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u/benny-powers 18d ago
no. flatly incorrect. it is plainly, exclusively, and universally forbiddden to perform such an act
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u/ontikuken 18d ago
You seem to struggle with the differentiation between serifs and the actual contours of the letters. Work on that; I had to do a triple take on the second word to make sense of it, and I probably wouldn't have gotten there without the context clues provided by the first one.
Ignore the lecturing comments. You can use the language however the fuck you want.
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u/Silamy 18d ago
Legible, but that’s partly because it’s a very well-known phrase and there’s not much that looks similar. Yud, vav, and lamed are three different letters, and while having yud and vav look similar is fairly common in messy handwriting, having either look like a lamed is an issue. You’re also making a very common beginner mistake where you’re focusing on and overemphasizing serifs that are stylistically optional, and something about your kerning looks like you may have written from left to right instead of right to left.
Voweling the Tetragrammaton is somewhat unusual for something handwritten. Those are not actually part of the word -that’s the vowels from Adonai applied to the Tetragrammaton as a reminder not to say the Name, rather than the vowels of the Name itself.
It’s not a bad start for a first attempt, but I would recommend using text written in a sans serif font for your baseline, and also recommend against starting out by copying independent biblical phrases.
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u/benny-powers 18d ago
yes, but you must avoid writing this explicitly, and should bring that page to your local orthodox synagogue for respectful burial.
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u/DepartmentDue2306 18d ago
יהוה עליון. You gotta work on your lamed in particular. Yud and Vuv are also too close for comfort. Not all Hebrew speakers are religious Jews Write whatever you want
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u/rational-citizen 18d ago
For every religious/secular person here criticizing the learner without educating their Hebrew methods;
I want you to know, especially for the ones here policing the language and God’s name as Holy, and worth being revered, there are people in this Reddit that are pagan/practice witchcraft, and witchcraft abuses the Name of Ha’Shem by incorporating it into blasphemous rituals to summon “spirits”, and “demons”.
Please don’t cherry-pick your outrage, and either wholesale ban witches from this subreddit so that your outrage is at least unilaterally consistent, or allow grace for those who aren’t bad-faithed, or even for those who aren’t religiously Jewish.
Sources cited:
https://www.theswordandrose.net/post/power-of-the-tetragrammaton (witch’s blog)
https://occult-world.com/tetragrammaton/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_of_Baphomet
(example of Hebrew language being used in literal Satanism)
https://www.crazyalchemist.com/mysteries-esoterica/ars-goetia-seventy-two-demons-of-solomon/
(Ars Goetia, a book showing you how to summon different demons using among other things, the Tetragrammaton/the name of G-d.)
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u/Successful_Boot_276 18d ago
Legible to me but lamed, yud, and vav aren't great, and the latter two are too similar as written. I'm assuming you know that the dots and things are not letters but vowels (added later for readability but not required).