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Re: Mitzrayim (was: New To List)

From:Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
Date:Thursday, February 13, 2003, 20:23
On 13 Feb, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Feb 2003 10:47:42 +1300 Wesley Parish > <wes.parish@...> writes: > > Mizraim, best known nowadays as the name of one of the branches of > > the Middle-Eastern Jewish community - Mizrahim, the people of Mizraim. > > > Wesley Parish > - > > I guess you're using |z| for /ts/ ? > That's generally transliterated |tz| or |ts|, so the country is Mitzrayim > and people from Mitzrayim are called Mitzrim. > The Modern Arabic name for Egypt is Misr, with an emphatic |s|. > "Mitzrayim" seems to be the dual form of "Misr", possibly refering to > Upper & Lower Egypt. The name may be associated with the root TzR, > "narrow".
And |Mizrahim| means "Easterners", from the Hebrew |mizrax|, or "east". Ultimately from the root z-r-x, meaning "red" (and from that, "glowing"). In Israeli usage, this term generally refers to Jews from Arabic-speaking countries. Probably a shortened form: (Middle-)East, although from an Israeli perspective, many of the Arabic-speaking countries (including Egypt) are _west_ of here! Jews from Morocco, for example, are considered |Mizrahim| but Morocco is not only west of here, ironically a lot of it is (south)west of England too ( from where, AFAIK, we derive the term "Middle-East")! Dan Sulani ------------------------------------------------------------------ likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a A word is an awesome thing.