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Aleph is the subject of a midrash which praises its humility in not demanding to start the Old Testament. In Hebrew the Bible begins with the second letter of the alphabet, Bet. In this folktale, ...

Most Hebrew months have one character or theme. The character of the month of Adar, for example is one of happiness during which the joyous holiday of Purim falls out. The upcoming month of Elul ...

Ever since I was a child, I have been terrified of rooms full of children — a strange trait for a Hebrew-school teacher. Yes, I adore kids one-on-one, but large groups of them scare me. I thought this ...

The rise of a whole new profession of calligraphy artists, often with little or no connection with tradition, has meant a new approach to the aleph-bet. A Hebrew scribe – sofer stam – has a special ...

In “Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed” (Six Gallery Press), writer Joshua Cohen, a literary critic for the Forward, and artist Michael Hafftka reinterpret the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, ...

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was the father of modern Hebrew. He was also the father of Ittamar Ben-Avi, who had his own ideas. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the late inventor of modern Hebrew, was feted recently in his ...

The textbook for the intensive Hebrew class that I enrolled in this past summer was called “Hebrew from Scratch”. Which didn’t technically apply to my situation, at age 48, in the Beginner Aleph ...