Also, I don’t associate the neighborhood with Semitic languages but rather with Indo‐European and Sino‐Tibetan ones; however, another attractive Semitic man was talking emphatically in Arabic into his mobile telephone on 82nd Street and then a couple sitting next to me in the hospital waiting room were talking in Arabic as well.
Gay Jewish–New Yorker and libertarian‐leaning classic liberal with some center‐right conservative views who is publishing on ▴ gay and ursine topics ▴ the public domain and freely licensed creative works ▴ Near Eastern, Central Asian, North African and Caucasian topics ▴ linguistics, particularly as relevant to the above populations ▴ Humanist, naturalist or Bright topics ▴ history, understood to include my own personal experiences in and occasionally out of my beloved native city.
30 December 2014
Also, I don’t associate the neighborhood with Semitic languages but rather with Indo‐European and Sino‐Tibetan ones; however, another attractive Semitic man was talking emphatically in Arabic into his mobile telephone on 82nd Street and then a couple sitting next to me in the hospital waiting room were talking in Arabic as well.
12 December 2014
My Sleep Study
19 November 2014
📷 Celebration of Sigd in Jerusalem.
📆 PikiWiki Israel 15508 Sigd Jerusalem, photograph by Yehudit Garinkol, 24 Nov. 2011, under a Creative Commons license.
19 June 2014
Sunday at the Ethical Humanist Society of Queens, we were joined by Richard L. Koral from the American Ethical Union and the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester who also joined us for our monthly luncheon thereafter at Jax Inn.
Six Exotic Jews group members also gathered Sunday for an “Exoticon” in Upper Manhattan. We met at General Grant National Memorial where Ariel emphasized Grant’s racism by reading aloud General Order Nº. 11 and then spitting on the site. (See the video.) A British tourist inquired about it, and after explaining, a number of us eventually got onto the topic of libertarianism (and their implying that we were a group of libertarians annoyed me because we are not, but rather a Jewish cultural group). There was also a large group of adolescents there rehearsing a dance routine.
After briefly visiting Sakura Park, those of us who were hungry got food from a local supermarket and we sat, talked and ate on public benches. Then we went to Riverside Park which was really gorgeous and we located what we believe is the Freedom Tunnel. Then came rehydration and dessert at other local venues and more talking and sitting on benches. Afterwards, we rode the subway together to Times Square and then little by little separated from one another as our paths diverged.
While waiting with one of them in Jackson Heights for his bus, our topics turned unsurprisingly towards linguistics (Arabic ligatures, and why the letter jim is a moon letter even though it’s usually coronal).
23 April 2014
Madison Square Park, April 2012
My current cover photo/header photo on the social networking sites.
📌 Madison Square Park after the Persian Parade, East 26 Street between Fifth and Madison avenues, Gramercy/Flatiron District, 15 April 2012. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam, under a Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial 4.0 International license.)
📷 DSCN1619.JPG, taken with Nikon Coolpix S220.
08 April 2014
Passover mythology
How does Eliyyahu (a.k.a Elijah/Elias) manage to get to absolutely every Passover seder? Why it must be with his chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire (rekeb ēsh wə‐sûsê ēsh רכב אש וסוסי אש)! The Greeks identified Elias with the sun god Helios due to a superficial similarity in their names and in their conveyances (although their names are etymologically unrelated, אליהו Ēliyyāhû being Afro‐Asiatic and Ήλιος Hēlios Indo‐European), and Eliyyahu is frequently portrayed in a fire chariot not unlike Helios’ sun chariot.
This is a detail of a fresco in Rila Monastery, Bulgaria, portraying Eliyyahu (Saint Elias) and his chariot of fire (from a larger picture on Wikimedia, in the public domain).
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[I]t is easily seen how, by a scarcely perceptible change of sound, the great god Helios could be transmuted into Elias. Helios drove round the world in his fiery chariot, drawn by horses. Elias went up to heaven in a similar conveyance. Helios produced rain and storm, and so did Elias by the fervor of his prayer on Mount Carmel. Elias brought down fire from heaven and so did the great sun‐god. Hence the parallel between the two was too tempting to be passed over.
—J. Theodore Bent, “Paganism in England,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 262, Jan. 1887, 36.
04 April 2014
The song playing at Foodtown was “Overcome,” by Jon Egan, as presumably performed by Jeremy Camp. (“Savior, worthy of honor and glory …/Jesus, awesome in power forever/Awesome and great is Your name….”) In Original American Chicken the following day, they were playing “I Get a Kick Out of You,” by Cole Porter as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Guess where I felt more comfortable.
03 April 2014
An openly gay Buddhist monk was our returning guest speaker Sunday at the Ethical Humanist Society of Queens speaking on meditation, a beneficial practice wherein Humanists should feel appropriate participating. He gave a good presentation but said a few things so abstract I couldn’t quite grasp them and a few other things with which I disagreed, one of which was his apparent belief the mind is not just a result of brain activity and saying Buddhists believe the mind is in the heart rather than the brain. He also repeatedly used the phrase food store instead of market or grocery.
01 April 2014
In many cultures, including many Near Eastern cultures, the year begins in springtime (March–April in the Northern Hemisphere) rather than wintertime (January–February).
Levantine, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples (specifically the Assyrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Kurdish, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Turkish peoples) replaced the names of the Gregorian months with names from the Babylonian calendar, and so April is called Nisan (نيسان، ܒܢܝܣܢ) and Assyrians celebrate 1 Nisan (called Ḥad bi‐Nisan ܚܕ ܒܢܝܣܢ) as the first day of the year.
The Hebrew calendar (or at least the predominant one used by Jews from the Rabbinic tradition if not the Karaites and Samaritans with whose calendars I’m less familiar) also uses month names from the Babylonian calendar, and 1 Nisan (א׳ בניסן) is one of the four Jewish New Year’s Days (as the Jews have one in each of the four seasons). Although the autumnal New Year’s Day (Roʼsh hash‐Shana ראש השנה) has eclipsed the others, the springtime one was the principal one in antiquity and is still the principal one among the Karaites today.
So today is 1 Nisan on both calendars, which usually don’t coincide so precisely.
Earlier
- Jaiku, 1 Apr. 2011.