32
As Danny Schoemann says, it's a ketubah. A Ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. The text in this form matches the standard text presented and translated on this Chabad.org page.
People
Groom: Yehuda Leib, son of Avraham Noah. He is also a Levi
Bride: Toiba Rachel, daughter of Yisrael Arye
Witness: Aharon Leib, son of Moshe the Levi
Witness: Abba David, ...
31
The KJV may give the general sense of a translation in many cases. However, it has a definite Christian bend and does not always follow the Jewish traditions in translation. I will illustrate this phenomenon with a few examples.
Isaiah 7:14 (see here):
MT:
לָ֠כֵן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם א֑וֹת הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙
וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את ...
24
It certainly doesn't mean electricity! The truth is, we don't really know what it means. And whatever it is, studying it is dangerous! Some of you may recall the story in BT Hagiga 13a, where a child is studying Ezekiel, ponders over the meaning of hashmal, and was consumed by fire. You have been warned...
From the context, it appears to be some kind of ...
24
R. Hoffman is using the German word for business school: Handelsschule. The question thus raised is:
A father told his son to write in business school on the holy Shabbat.
He does not want to and his mother told him that if he doesn't
listen to his father and they quarrel in the house, she will kill herself
(Lord help us). Should the boy obey his ...
21
Actually, the earliest rabbinic sources present the Greek translation (the Septuagint) in glowing terms. In the Mishna, Megillah 1:8, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel is quoted as having said that Greek is the only language, other than Hebrew, in which it is permissible to write sifrei Torah. Commenting on this, the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 71c) says that the ...
18
There's no sin in translating Jewish texts (nowadays, at least). I have no source for saying so, but there's evidence in the vast amount of Jewish literature that has been translated into various languages. However:
People sometimes can't be bothered to translate, especially because of the remaining reasons (below).
Some words are very hard to translate ...
18
In the manuscript Parma 3173 there is no "מישראל";
In the manuscript Budapest Kaufman A50 no more;
The Mishna of Mechon Mamre, Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 based on Rambam manuscript idem;
לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי בעולם, ללמד שכל המאבד נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא; וכל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא.
In Shinuye Nussachaot Shas ...
16
My sister made this chart. It is kind of a condensed version of the hebrew one:
And here's a version with the titles transliterated, instead of translated:
16
Harry Orlinsky, editor-in-chief of the NJPS, in a 1990 essay pointed to the example of three texts in the KJV as being faulty and showing Christian bias: Genesis 1:1-3, Psalm 2:12, and Isaiah 7:14. The Isaiah 7:14 text has been discussed in the first post above and the one following, so only a discussion of the other two texts needs to be done.
Genesis 1:1-...
15
In British English, "corn" can mean any grain, not just maize (the plant native to America). See Merriam-Webster; Wiktionary.
13
The religious implication of this ketubah is that it may be possible to use it to establish, in a Jewish court, certain facts about the listed bride and groom:
That they were Jewish. On this basis, their children would also be Jewish, as would any children of their daughters, of their daughters' daughters, etc.
That the man was a Levi. On this basis, he, ...
13
Radak in Sefer Hashorashim (page 155 in this copy), explains that it refers to someone who is "young in years", without specifying an age. However, he continues, it can also refer to an attendant (since the young generally serve the elderly), or one who is young in wisdom (i.e. foolish).
Thus, there is no definitive age referred to by the word נער, and it ...
12
Perhaps because not everyone translates "Mei Raglayim" as urine.
The Shitah Mekubetzet (Chof-Chet) to Kritot 6A brings 2 translations of "Mei Raglayin". The first being actual urine, but the second being a grass with that name. And the name makes it an embarrassment to use it for service in the Beit Hamikdash.
I also remember reading another explanation ...
11
Hebrew is the language of the Torah. The holy language. Translation inevitably creates a certain perspective on the text, as a Hebrew word can have multiple meanings or interpretations. A word for word translation would not make sense. The meaning often gets simplified, if not lost, in translation.
11
Wikipedia. As described there, Neusner has been criticized by the following scholars in his field of study:
[Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics,"
Conservative Judaism, Vol.37(1) Fall 1983 p. 48-63]
[Craig A. Evans, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context'," Journal of
Biblical Literature, (JBL), 112/2 1993, p. 267-289]
[...
11
The notion of a semi-spherical shell around the world, that the sun travels under during the day, and then back around and over at night is not necessarily the early Israelite understanding of cosmology. Most of the evidence for it is from an era when he Babylonians and Persians had much much more accurate observations than the Greeks, and it is the ...
10
See this comprehensive and well sourced paper on the topic by one of our site regulars. Cush was the son of Cham, and the grandson of Noah (Exodus 10:6), and according to the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 36:7), he was cursed by his grandfather to be dark-skinned.
In terms of the location of the land of Cush, he writes:
"Cush" is commonly translated as ...
10
In Beraishis 41 (45) Osnat is mentioned as the daughter of Potifera. Rashi comments there on the change of name. He says:
Poti-phera: He is Potiphar, but he was called Poti-phera because he
became emasculated since he desired Joseph for homosexual relations. —
[from Sotah 13b].
So we see that he was not emasculated until he desired Joseph.
10
Emeritus Chief Rabbi Jonathan H. Sacks, "In Praise of Sefaria":
"Sefaria is one of my favorite things in the entire contemporary Jewish world. It is taking cutting-edge technology and doing something very spiritual by it. What it is doing is opening up the rich treasury of our texts - we the people of the book, the people that never stopped writing and ...
10
KJV is definitely not considered most-accurate; at the bare minimum, it was not a direct Hebrew-to-English translation. KJV was intended to sound old, and to sound really good when spoken out-loud.
The Jewish Publication Society translation of 1917 (JPS) is commonly-referenced, widely available (full text available at that link), and a good starting point, ...
9
The commentary M'tzudas Tziyon says it means a clear, smokeless fire.
The commentary Mahari [=R. Yosef] Kara says it means a tongue of fire.
9
The word means "virgin". M'tzudas David (commentary on Joel) says it refers to someone mourning over her first husband, that is the husband she had married when she had been a virgin. (Hence also the "husband of her youth" bit.) A woman is closer, he explains, to such a husband than to a second husband.
9
http://www.themercava.com/dafyomi
This is a website which has the translation of each phrase in gemara as one hovers over the phrase, not sure how much of the Gemara they have done though.
9
As mentioned above, there aren't any general prohibitions (per se) on translating Jewish texts into the vernacular, be it English, French, Russian, Yiddish, etc.
Regarding Text on This Site
Many posts and answers here are among those for whom Hebrew is not a foreign language. Many of this site's users know each other (at least virtually) and are aware of ...
9
אם אשכחך ירושלים תשכח ימיני Im eshkachek Yerushalayim tishkach yemini
"If I forget you O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill." The words are from Psalms 137:5.
8
I'm not a Rav so please confirm the following with your local orthodox rabbi.
The following is from Kof-K.
Horav Chaim Pinchus Sheinberg Shlita
is of the opinion that a person who went through the mesechta with an English
translation may make a siyum. However, the person who is using the English has to be
actually working on understanding the Gemorah and ...
8
SBA quotes the Yismach Mosheh that a "ba'al nefesh" is someone for whom the things related to the soul are more important than physical things. Rabbi Gil Student also quotes some statements by Rashi and Rabbeinu Chanan'el to define a ba'al nefesh. Rabbi Micha Berger quotes the Nefesh HaChayim as well; see there.
You can read the whole subject on Avodah here....
8
It would seem that at the time of Yosef's employment Potiphor was NOT a eunich based on the pasuk and Rashi Breshit Chapter 39 Pasuk 19
:וַיְהִי כִשְׁמֹעַ אֲדֹנָיו אֶת דִּבְרֵי אִשְׁתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר דִּבְּרָה אֵלָיו לֵאמֹר כַּדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה עָשָׂה לִי עַבְדֶּךָ וַיִּחַר אַפּוֹ
Now it came about when his master heard his wife's report that she spoke to him, ...
8
To add a little bit:
This sentence (in Hebrew: ותשובה ותפלה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזרה, uteshuva utefila utzedaqa ma'avirin et roa' hagezeira) is from the well-known piyyut (liturgical poem) Unetaneh Tokef, which is recited during the High Holidays. It is attributed (probably apocryphally) to a certain 11th-century rabbi, Amnon of Mainz but is probably a few ...
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