Old Aramaic: A King, a Curse, and Some Familiar Territory
A Hebrew and Gemara reader tries two Old Aramaic inscriptions: a Syrian king saved from a siege, and a treaty curse of seven nurses and one unsatisfied baby.
Learning & Languages
Dew of Your Youth
טַל יַלְדֻתֶיךָ Tehillim 110:3
Dew of Your Youth is about thought, memory, matters of faith, and the systems we build to keep our thinking from dissolving.
Jewish texts, personal workflows, family archives, and languages learned along the way.
If you’ve ever tried to organize your soul with Markdown, welcome.
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Faith & Practice
The King Arrives Quietly: Tzidkat HaTzaddik 68
Rav Tzadok on why mastering yourself makes no noise: Eliyahu’s still, small voice, and the king the blind Rav Sheshet knew by its silence.
Learning & Languages
I Read Aramaic for Years. Then I Heard It Spoken.
Years of Talmud and Targum gave me a strong reading knowledge of Aramaic. Then I listened to people who actually speak it.
Faith & Practice
Praying for What Is Already Decreed: Tzidkat HaTzaddik 66–67
My father and I learned אותיות ס״ו–ס״ז of Tzidkat HaTzaddik. The first concerns prayer, including prayer for something Hashem has already decreed. The second concerns returning in teshuva to earlier sins when you reach a higher מדרגה.
Learning & Languages
How Much Ugaritic Can I Read with Hebrew?
A Hebrew speaker reads Ugaritic: a priest’s axe, a letter from Tyre, and a line of Baal poetry where the heavens rain oil.
Categories
Learning & Languages
Language learning as obsession, memory systems, and pedagogy.
19 posts
Faith & Practice
Jewish rituals, Torah journaling, spiritual processing, the Elul Logs.
27 posts
Heritage & Identity
Genealogy deep-dives, travel stories, cultural identity unraveling.
18 posts
Tech & Tools
Obsidian, Hugo tweaks, DevOps rants, scripts that almost worked.
15 posts