Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender

On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:40:38 -0500 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
>Steg Belsky wrote:
>> It's part of a Sephardic Passover Seder-night "ceremony" that is a
>> "dramatization/recreation" of the exodus...the questions are in some
>> dialect of Arabic, and the answers are in Hebrew:
>Ah, I see.  Why is the language mixed?  That is, why not all Hebrew,
>or
>all Arabic?
>
>--
>AIM Screen-name: NikTailor
>
I don't know, i'm Ashkenazic :)
But i have a few theories....i'll check them out sometime:
1. the Arabic could represent the language of the people around, asking
the Jews these questions when they see them wandering through the desert.
 The answers given would then be in Hebrew.
2. it could be that it's all supposed to be in the "vernacular", which
for most Sepharadim would be Arabic.  The answers, even though they're in
Hebrew, are common enough to not need to be translated.


-Stephen (Steg)
 _u-ku uhmzu-solg moshe i ^barei^yisraeil sha'solg-a dhaz-a
wa'hashe:m..._
 "az yashir moshe uvenei yisra'eil et hashira hazot l'hashem..."
 ('and then moses and the children of israel sang this song to god...",
the introduction to the Song of the Sea)

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