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Jaffa, Israel

Jaffa, Israel

:For the fictional Stargate race, see Jaffa (Stargate). Jaffa (Hebrew יָפוֹ, Standard Hebrew Yafo, Tiberian Hebrew Yāp̄ô; Arabic يَافَا ; also Japho, Joppa; also, ~1350 B.C.E. Amarna Letters, Yapu), is an ancient city located in Israel. It is now part of the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo in the Tel Aviv District, where the tell ("mound") of ancient Jaffa in “Old Jaffa” is now part of a park in south-western Tel Aviv. Jaffa is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea and the historic gateway into Israel. It is mentioned twice in the Hebrew Bible, once as the port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple (2 Chronicles 2) and once as the place from whence the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Book of Jonah 1:3). It was an important city in the Arab Middle East before Israel was established. During the Crusades it was the County of Jaffa, a stronghold of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Kingdom of Jerusalem

History

Name sources

Jaffa (or Yaffo) is one of the most ancient port cities in the world. Some claim that Jaffa was named after Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, who built it after the Great Flood. A Hebrew etymology indicates that the city is called Jaffa because of its beauty (yofi in Hebrew). The Hellenist tradition links the name to "Iopeia", which is Cassiopeia, the mother of Andromeda. However the Hellenist accounting for the name dates from hundreds of years after the original naming.

Ancient period

The ancient site of Jaffa is now a 40-meter (130 ft.) high hill (Tel Yafo, or "Jaffa Hill"). The hill is suitable for fortifications and defense, and at its foot lie springs which supply fresh water. The accumulation of debris and landfill has over time increased the original strategic advantage of the hill by augmenting its wide field of view over the adjacent coastline. Jaffa's natural harbor has been occupied since the Bronze Age. It is mentioned in an Ancient Egyptian letter from 1470 BC, glorifying its conquest by Pharaoh Thutmose III, who hid armed warriors in large baskets and gave the baskets as a present to the Canaanite city's governor. The city is also mentioned in the Amarna letters under its Egyptian name Ya-Pho, ( Ya-Pu, EA 296, l.33 ). In 1991, a replica of the Egyptian gate lintels, bearing the titles of Pharaoh Ramesses II, was re-erected on its original site. The city was under Egyptian rule until around 800 BC. Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the border of the Tribe of Dan's territory. It appears that many of the descendants of Dan, for whom the entire coastal plain is named (Gush Dan), lived along the shore and earned their living from shipmaking and sailing. This is mentioned in the "Song of Deborah" the prophetess, in her complaint "דן למה יגור אוניות": "Why will Dan dwell in ships?" [http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0705.htm], for Dan did not help Judge Barak Ben Avinoam in their war. King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa and ruled it, and via its port the cedars which were used in the construction of the First Temple arrived from Tyre. The city remained in Jewish hands even after the split of the Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BC the city port was used by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, to invade Israel in the time of King Hezekiah (חזקיהו). Jaffa was a Seleucid port until the Maccabean rebel princes took it (1 Maccabees x.76, xiv.5). During the Jewish Revolt, Jaffa was taken and burned by Cestius and eight thousand inhabitants were massacred (according to Josephus). Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, who razed the city and erected a citadel in its place. Vespasian placed a Roman garrison in the citadel.

Christian Jaffa

According to the New Testament it was at Jaffa that St. Peter resurrected the widow Tabitha, a name interpreted Dorcas (Acts, ix, 36-42), whose tomb is still the object of popular pilgrimage. Unimportant during the first centuries of Christianity, Jaffa did not have a bishop until the fifth century AD. It was captured during the Crusades, and became the County of Jaffa and Ascalon, one of the vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. One of its counts, John of Ibelin, wrote the principal book of the Assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. During the period of the Crusades, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (1170) sojourned at Jaffa, and found there just one Jew, a dyer by trade. Saladin took it in 1187. It was surrendered to King Richard the Lionheart in 1192. According to the traveler Cotwyk, Jaffa was a heap of ruins at the end of the 16th century.

The Ottoman period

Napoleon captures Jaffa

On March 7, 1799 Napoleon I of France captured Jaffa and his troops proceeded to kill more than two thousand Albanian captives.

Rabbi Kook becomes Jaffa's chief rabbi

Albania of Jaffa from 1904-1921.]] In 1904 Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1864-1935) moved to the Land of Israel and took up the position of chief rabbi of Jaffa: :In 1904, he came to the Land of Israel to assume the rabbinical post in Jaffa, which also included responsibility for the new secular Zionist agricultural settlements nearby. His influence on people in different walks of life was already noticeable, as he attempted to introduce Torah and Halakha into the life of the city and the settlements. [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Rav_Kook.html] In 1921 Rabbi Kook moved to Jerusalem when he was apponited as the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine and is still regarded as Israel's first chief rabbi as well.

End of Ottoman rule

In 1917, the Ottomans banished all of Jaffa's residents as they feared the British army would occupy the city. The British did indeed occupy the city (see Sinai and Palestine Campaign), but let its residents return after a year.

Under the British mandate

Jaffa was well known for its cash crops such as citrus and bananas. In 1945, Arabs planted 146,316 dunams of citrus, and Jews planted 66,403 dunams. (One dunam equals 1196 square yards.) Until the establishment of Tel Aviv and the era of the British Mandate of Palestine, Jaffa had the most advanced commercial, banking, fishing, and agriculture industries in Palestine. It had many factories specializing in cigarette making, cement making, tile and roof tile production, iron casting, cotton processing plants, traditional handmade carpets, leather products, wood boxes for Jaffa oranges, textiles, presses and publications. The majority of all publications and newspapers in Palestine were published in Jaffa. During 1917-1920, there were thousands of Jewish residents in Jaffa. A wave of Arab pogrom attacks during 1920 and 1921 (known as the Meoraot Tarpa by the Jews) caused many Jewish residents to flee and resettle in Tel Aviv. The 1921 riots began with a May Day parade (May 1, 1921) that turned violent. The Arab rioters attacked Jewish people and buildings, including the residents of "The House of Immigrants" and the Jewish author Yosef Haim Brenner. At the end of 1922 Jaffa had 32,000 residents while Tel Aviv had 15,000. However, in 1927, Tel Aviv had 38,000 residents. The Jews of Jaffa lived on the outskirts of Jaffa, close to Tel Aviv. The old city of Jaffa, which was controlled by the Arabs, was almost empty of Jews. During the 1930s both cities had a combined population of 80,000 residents.

The Great Arab Uprising

The 1936-1939 Great Arab uprising inflicted great economic and infrastructural damage on Jaffa.
- Urban warfare between the British forces and Arab rioters destroyed many of the city's narrow alleys. The British demolished many houses belonging to rioters and militants.
- Jewish and British citizens moved their businesses out of Jaffa.
- As a reaction to the strike of the Arab seaport workers, the Jews built a modern seaport in Tel Aviv, which resulted in decreased income for Jaffa's Arab seaport.

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

Prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the UN's Special Commission on Palestine in 1947 recommended that Jaffa become part of the planned Jewish state. However, due to the large Arab majority it was instead designated as an enclave in the Arab state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The Arabs rejected the plan and the day following November 29, 1947, launched a wave of riots and attacks on nearby Jewish settlements. In December 1947, Arab residents of Jaffa and the nearby Salame village attacked "The Hope Neighborhood" (Shechunat ha-Tikva) in Tel Aviv. As a result, the Irgun launched counter-raids against Jaffa, often also hurting the civilian population. In February 1948, Jewish workers were slain by Arabs in a factory after being disarmed by the British. The killing caused an uprising and Jaffa became a battle ground between Arabs and Jews. On March 13, 1948, the first Davidka mortars were used and the bombardment caused many Arab residents to flee, although the noise created by the mortar was much larger than the damage it caused. On May 10, 1948, the Irgun (Etzel) paramilitary group began an assault on the city, helping to cause the mass flight of the remaining inhabitants. Many Palestinians had left Jaffa in the previous months due to attacks by the Irgun against Palestinian targets across Palestine. At one point, British forces, attempting to prevent the inhabitants of the town from being expelled, engaged the Irgun in battle. The Irgun retreated at first, but were subsequently assisted by Hagannah fighters. A formal surrender to the Jewish forces was made on May 13, one day before the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. To comemorate the conquest of Jaffa, the "Conquest Garden" was planted in the city. Prior to May 1948 the Arab population had fallen from 75,000 to 55,000. On the day of surrender less than three weeks later, only about 4,500 Arabs remained. Most of the Arab population fled, while others, particularly the poor segments living in Jaffa's Old City, remained. They form the basis of the modern Arab population of Jaffa. The refugees have not been allowed to return to their homes and are now scattered over the world, many living in refugee camps. (see more details in the article Palestinian refugees)

Displacement of the Arab Population

The reason that so many Arabs fled may have been the massacre at Deir Yassin on April 9. The capture of Jaffa differed from the earlier conquests in that under the UN plan it was supposed to remain as a Palestinian enclave between neighboring Tel Aviv and Jewish areas to the south and east designated as part of the Jewish state. However according to Slunuel Toledano, a Jewish intelligence officer, there were other factors as well which caused the Arabs to leave: "The Etzel [Irgun] had been shelling Jaffa for three weeks before the Haganah [regular army] entered, making the Arabs very much afraid." After the conquest, Irgun forces indulged in widespread looting. Jon Kimche, former editor of the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, the official organ of the Zionist Federation of Britain reported: "For the first time in the still undeclared war, a Jewish force commenced to loot in wholesale fashion." At first the young Irgunists pillaged only dresses, blouses and ornaments for their girl-friends. But this discrimination was soon abandoned. Everything that was movable was carried from Jaffa - furniture, carpets, pictures, crockery and pottery, jewellery and cutlery. The occupied parts of Jaffa were stripped. Historian Michael Palumbo wrote of Jaffa: "Not content with looting, the Irgun fighters smashed or destroyed everything which they could not carry off, including pianos, lamps and window-panes. Ben Gurion afterwards admitted that Jews of all classes poured into Jaffa from Tel Aviv to participate in what he called 'a shameful and distressing spectacle'." Soon after occupation, the Israelis blew up and bulldozed most of Jaffa's (75%) Arab section, and only the al-'Ajami, Old City, and small part of al-Mansheyyah survived demolition. Mostly (if not all) Jaffa's Suqs were obliterated including Suq al-Nahaseen, Suq al-Balabseh, Suq al-Maslakh, etc. In 1954, Jaffa became part of Tel Aviv, and since then both cities are known as Tel Aviv-Yafo. Currently, Jaffa's Old City neighbourhood is being renovated, and is inhabited mostly by artists. Jaffa's main port has been closed and all its shipping has been diverted either to the Tel Aviv or Ashdod ports. Jaffa's main Clock Square is now named Kikar Hagana ("Haganah Square"). Jaffa's main street Bistress-Iskandar 'Awad is now named Rehev Mifrats Shelomo. Jamal Basha street name has been changed to Jerusalem Street. The al-Manshiyyah area (a densely built salient of Arab Jaffa projecting into Jewish Tel Aviv) which was the center of the fighting and was badly damaged, including by blowing up buildings to dislodge Arab defenders, was mostly demolished after the war and became a public park. Jaffa's Arab population now numbers around 10,000 people.

Modern Jaffa

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population of Jaffa had swelled considerably and new suburbs were built on the sand dunes along the coast. By 1909, the new Jewish suburbs north of Jaffa were reorganized as the city of Tel Aviv. Modern Jaffa has a heterogeneous population of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The city is now an integral part of the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. Jaffa is a major tourist attraction with an exciting combination of old, new and restored. It offers art galleries, souvenir shops, exclusive restaurants, sidewalk cafes, boardwalks and shopping opportunities and a rich variety of culture, entertainment and food (fish restaurants). Tel Aviv-Yafo.]]

Restoration of the Old City

The poverty of the population threatened the continuation of active life in Jaffa as a thriving city. In 1968, the government of Israel and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality decided to establish a corporation for the development of Old Jaffa, entrusting to it the task of averting the total destruction of Old Jaffa's glorious past. Old Jaffa has since become one of Israel's tourist attractions. It is filled with artists' quarters, studios and art galleries. Shops catering for Judaica, archaeology, jewelry and art, line its narrow alleys which are named after the signs of the Zodiac. Visitors arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel can hear about the old homes in a booklet called "The Opinionated Tourist Guide". The guide is given to tourists, who can read that "the most beautiful homes in the country are the old Arab ones made of stone, built in the early part of the century, that dot the capital and some streets of Haifa and Jaffa. They cost a fortune, however: a price of $1,000,000 is not uncommon and there are not many of them for sale."

Places to see

- The Clock Square, built in 1906 in honor of Sultan Abed al-Hamid II's 25th anniversary, became the center of Jaffa, and it is centered between Jaffa's markets.
- The Abulafia bakery in Yeffeth Street (the main street of Jaffa) is a famous restaurant and a symbol of Jewish-Arab coexistence.
- Mahamoudia Mosque which was built by Abu Nabut (the city governor during the 19th century) and includes a water fountain (Savil) for pilgrims.
- St. Peter Church, a Franciscan church, built in the 19th century on the remains of Crusaders' fortress, which serves also as a hostel. It is told that Napoleon stayed in that church while it was a hostel.
- The Andromeda rock, according to legends this was the rock to which beautiful Andromeda was chained.
- The Zodiac alleys, a network of restored alleys, full with art galleries, which lead to the Jaffa seaport.
- Jaffa's Old Seaport.
- Jaffa's Hill, a center for archeological excavations of the ancient cities. The most ancient are the Ancient Egyptian gates, about 3,500 years old, which were restored.
- The Libyan Synagogue called Beit Zunana was purchased by the Jewish landlord Zunana in the 18th century. During the 19th century it stopped being used as a synagogue, and became a hostel and later a soap factory. In 1948 it was re-established as a synagogue for Libyan Jewish immigrants, and in 1995 it became a museum.

References

- Moran, William. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1987, 1992.
- Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- Nakhleh, Issa. Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem. (2 vols.). New York: Intercontinental Books, 1991.
- Palumbo, Michael. The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1987.
- Quigley, John. Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.
- Segev, Tom. The First Israelis. New York: The Free Press, 1986.
- Silver, Eric. Begin: The Haunted Prophet. New York: Random House, 1984.

External links

- [http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/english/index.htm Tel Aviv official website (English)] [http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/ (Hebrew)]
- [http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0494/9404075.htm Arab Jaffa seized before Israel's creation in 1948. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.]
- [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=135&letter=J Jewish Encyclopedia]: Jaffa
- [http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/jaffa/jaffa.htm Jacqueline Schaalje, "Jaffa"]
- [http://www.jaffa.8m.net "Web Site of the Palestinian Arab City of Jaffa". By: Norman Ali Khalaf. (English and German)]. Palestinian perspective. Category:Tel Aviv Category:History of Israel Category:Sea Peoples Category:Cities in Israel

Stargate

:This article is about a fictional universe based on a 1994 film. See Stargate (disambiguation) for more uses of the word "Stargate". Stargate (disambiguation) television series.]] Stargate collectively refers to the fictional universe started with the 1994 science fiction feature film Stargate, and afterwards continued in novel form, in two live-action television series (Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis) and in other derivative works. It is based on the premise of a Stargate, a device that allows for almost instantaneous teleportation, by creating a wormhole to a complementary device on another planet. Discovered in 1928 at Giza, Egypt, its purpose was unknown until the late 1990s when it was discovered after study by several specialists and experts. A top-secret military program was created to explore the galaxy through it, interacting with aliens and with humans who were transported from Earth in the distant past. In the Stargate universe, most Earth mythologies are based on events and personalities of aliens who visited Earth in the past through these gates. Many of the prominent alien characters on the show closely correspond to the gods recorded in Egyptian, Norse, and other mythologies. A race of parasitic aliens, the Goa'uld, were the main antagonists of the Milky Way, until finally vanquished at the climax of Stargate SG-1s 8th Season. They would, however, be replaced by a group of Ascended Beings, the Ori, in the 9th Season. The Atlantis expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy find it dominated by the life-sucking Wraith. However, sometimes the problems don't come from outside, but from within some sections of the US government.
Film
Wraith.]] Stargate, the feature film, was released in 1994. It was originally intended as the start of a film franchise, but creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin moved on to create Independence Day and Godzilla. Emmerich and Devlin had nothing to do with Stargate SG-1 and do not consider it a valid continuation of the film's story, although MGM owns the rights to the franchise. As a result, some fans of the movie reject the series (and vice-versa). The movie set the grounds of the Stargate universe. Dr. Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader), a brilliant Egyptologist shunned by the academic world due to his farfetched theories, is hired to decipher the symbols on an ancient ring-shaped artifact (the Stargate), made of an unknown material, which had been found at Giza in 1928. Jackson discovers the true purpose of the ring and opens the gate for interplanetary travel. USAF Colonel Jack O'Neil (played by Kurt Russell) leads an expedition to planet Abydos, where they come into conflict with an alien "God" posing as the Ra of Egyptian Mythology.
Television
Two live-action television series continue the story of the original movie (with adjustments). An animated series has also been broadcast, but it is not currently considered canon.

Stargate SG-1

canon Stargate SG-1 debuted on Showtime on July 27, 1997, and moved to the Sci-Fi Channel after its fifth season. Created by Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright, it starred Richard Dean Anderson (as O'Neill), Michael Shanks (as Jackson), Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Don S. Davis. At the end of season 7 Don S. Davis had his role reduced to an infrequent guest star as did Anderson by moving into the background in the ninth season, which added new regulars Ben Browder and Beau Bridges. Actor Corin Nemec was a regular during the sixth season. Starting one year after the original film, the series chronicles the activities of SG-1, the first exploratory team of the newly-formed Stargate Command (the "SGC"). The series expanded on the movie, created a full and rich mythology and a cast of recurring characters. Stargate SG-1 proved to be very popular. The series was expected to end at its seventh season, but it has continued to extend to its current ninth season. As of October 24th 2005, Stargate SG-1 has offically been renewed and given a record breaking tenth season beating the The X-Files as the longest running United States science-fiction series with its 200th episode believed to be early in the next season. The original Stargate film made it seem like Ra was the last of his race, but in SG-1, the main threat to Earth is from other beings like him, the Goa'uld, parasitic aliens that pose as gods. They have massive armies of footsoldiers, the Jaffa, and colonies on other enslaved planets, as well as fleets of attack ships. In SG-1, the teams must visit other worlds through the Stargate so as to find new technology capable of defending Earth from the Goa'uld.

Stargate Atlantis

Jaffa Stargate Atlantis debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel on July 16, 2004, starring Joe Flanigan, Torri Higginson, Rainbow Sun Francks, David Hewlett, and Rachel Luttrell. The series is currently on its second season, adding Paul McGillion and Jason Momoa as series regulars, and has been renewed for a third season. This series follows the adventures of the Atlantis expedition, a combined military and civilian exploratory expedition that travel to the Pegasus galaxy in search of the Lost City of Atlantis, left behind by the powerful aliens known as the Ancients. The series introduces a new enemy, called "the Wraith". Atlantis was originally intended to succeed Stargate SG-1 after its seventh season and a second feature film. When SG-1 was renewed for an eighth season, the intended movie became the episode "Lost City", a two-part season finale. The setting of Stargate Atlantis was moved to the Pegasus galaxy.

Stargate Infinity

season finale Stargate Infinity is an animated series that ran from September 2002 to June 2003. Even though the series was produced by MGM with DiC Entertainment, none of the writers and producers of Stargate SG-1 or other live-action Stargate projects were involved with Infinity. According to SG-1 co-creator Brad Wright, "the animated series should not be considered official Stargate canon." Set about 30 to 40 years in the future, Infinity tells the story of a team of young recruits led by a veteran member of the SGC that are framed for a crime they did not commit. The team must travel from world to world trying to find a way to clear their name.
Books
There are three series of novels based on the Stargate franchise and various comics.
Movie-based
A series of books written by Bill McCay were published from 1996 to 1999 that were sequels to the film. However, the subsequent TV series was an entirely different development and there was no attempt to reconcile the plot lines of the books and television show.
- Stargate: Rebellion
- Stargate: Retaliation
- Stargate: Retribution
- Stargate: Reconnaissance
- Stargate: Resistance
Series-based

ROC books
Since 1999, several novels have been released based on the Stargate SG-1 series. These books were written by Ashley McConnell.
- Stargate SG-1 (novelization of the series' pilot, "Children of the Gods")
- The Price You Pay
- The First Amendment
- The Morpheus Factor
Fandemonium books
A series of licensed tie-in novels by Fandemonium Press Ltd. based on the Stargate SG-1 series is also available in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They're not available in the US bookstores due to licensing issues. Titles have been corrected to show the authorized official title of each novel.
- Stargate SG-1: Trial By Fire by Sabine C. Bauer
- Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon by Julie Fortune)
- Stargate SG-1: A Matter Of Honour (1 of 2) by Sally Malcolm
- Stargate SG-1: City Of The Gods by Sonny Whitelaw
- Stargate SG-1: The Cost Of Honour (2 of 2) by Sally Malcolm
- Stargate SG-1: Siren Song by Jaimie Duncan and Holly Scott (upcoming) -- spelling of author names is per the authors and amazon.co.uk
- Stargate SG-1: Survival of the Fittest (upcoming) Fandemonium will also launch a new series of books based on Stargate Atlantis in late 2005. Those books will be available worldwide.
- Stargate Atlantis: Rising by Sally Malcolm (novelization of the pilot episode). On sale December 15.
- Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary by Martha Wells (forthcoming February 2006) -- title and publication date are per Martha Wells' website, amazon.co.uk and gasbo.net
- Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen by Sonny Whitelaw and Beth Christensen (13 April 2006) - per gasbo.net Unlike with the SG-1 books, Fandemonium will not be accepting fan submissions for the Atlantis books. They will be written only by professional writers.
Comic books
A series of comic books was based on Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis which began to be published by Avatar Press in 2003.
Other

- A Stargate Role-Playing Game was produced by Alderac Entertainment; however, they lost the license to produce Stargate RPG products when Sony bought MGM, and the RPG license is currently unassigned.
- Two video games based on the movie were released by Acclaim Entertainment: a side-scrolling platformer for the Super NES and Sega Genesis, and a Tetris like puzzle game for the Game Boy.
- Stargate SG-1: The Alliance, a computer game based on the Stargate concept, due to be released in early 2006, is currently in production by the Sydney based developer, Perception.
- There are at least three simulator-style amusement park rides named Stargate SG-3000 located at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, Six Flags Great America, and Six Flags Marine World.
External links

- Official sites
- [http://www.stargatesg1.com MGM: Stargate SG-1]
- [http://www.stargateatlantis.com MGM: Stargate Atlantis]
- [http://scifi.com/stargate/ SCIFI.COM | Stargate SG-1]
- [http://scifi.com/atlantis/ SCIFI.COM | Stargate Atlantis]
- [http://www.stargatenovels.com/ Fandemonium books]
- [http://www.stargatesg1rpg.com/ Alderac Entertainment's SG-1 RPG site]
- IMDB links
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- News and information sites
- [http://www.gateguide.net/ GateGuide.net | The Internets Largest Stargate Website Directory!]
- [http://gateworld.net/ GateWorld | Your Complete Guide to Stargate!]
- [http://www.stargateomega.com/ Stargate Omega]
- [http://www.pegasusgalaxy.com/ Pegasus Galaxy | The Online Scifi Resource (Includes SG1, Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica]
- [http://www.scifigate.net/ Scifigate.net]
- [http://sg1archive.com Stargate SG-1 Archive]
- [http://wiki.stargate-sg1-solutions.com Stargate Wiki]
- [http://www.scifidirectory.net/cat-41.html Stargate Links]
- [http://www.sg-one-stargate.com/z/html/ Sg-One-Stargate.com Toute l'actualité Francophone sur Stargate] (French)
- [http://www.scifi-source.com/ SciFi Source | Stargate SG1, SGA, and SciFi! Bios, images, videos, downloads, Forums and more!]
- Fan Sites
- [http://www.sgc-network.com/ Stargate Command Network | Chat, Forums, Simming, Events, Games and More!]
- [http://www.the5thrace.net/ The5thRace | Discussion Forums for Stargate and SciFi]
- Mailing lists and forums
- [http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sg1_spoilme/ SG1_Spoilme - spoiler/news list]
- [http://s11.invisionfree.com/Scifi_Straight_Dope/index.php?c=1 The Straight Dope]
- Games
- [http://www.stargate-thealliance.com/ Stargate SG-1: The Alliance] First-person shooter game.
- [http://www.stargatewars.com/ Stargatewars] A text based RPG with various races from the show. Category:Stargate ja:スターゲイト

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 6 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. The core of the Tanakh (sometimes referred to as the Hebrew Bible), the Torah (which Christianity and Judaism traditionally hold to have been first recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago), is written in (Biblical) Classical Hebrew. Jews have always called it לשון הקודש Lashon ha-Qodesh ("The Sacred Language") as the scriptures written in this language were considered sacred. Most scholars agree that after the first destruction of Jerusalem by the Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the kind of Hebrew prevalent in the Tanakh was replaced in daily use by Mishnaic Hebrew and a local version of Aramaic. After the depletion of the Jewish population of parts of Roman occupied Judea, it is believed that Hebrew gradually ceased to be a spoken language roughly around 200 CE, but has stayed as the major written language throughout the centuries. Not only religious, but texts for a large variety of purposes: letters and contracts, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, protocols of courts—all resorted to Hebrew, which thus adapted itself to various new fields and terminologies by borrowings and new inventions. Hebrew was revitalized as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing a score of languages spoken by the Jews at that time, such as Arabic, Judezmo (also called Ladino), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921, and the primary official language of the State of Israel, (Arabic maintained its official language status). The Hebrew name for the language is עברית, or Ivrit (IPA: )

History

While the term "Hebrew" as a nationality is customarily used to refer to the ancient Israelites, the classical Hebrew language was extremely similar to the Canaanite languages spoken by their neighbors, such as Phoenician; indeed, Moabite and Hebrew are often considered to be two dialects of the same language. Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.

Early history

Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. This language family is generally thought by linguists to have originated somewhere in northeastern Africa, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BCE, although there is much debate about the exact date and place. (The theory is espoused by most archeologists and linguists, but at odds with traditional reading of the Torah.) One branch of this family, Semitic, eventually reached the Middle East; it gradually differentiated into a variety of related languages. By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE the ancestral languages of Aramaic, Ugaritic, and other various Canaanite languages were spoken in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran filtered south into and came under the influence of the Levant, like many sojourners into Canaan including the Philistines, they adopted Canaanite dialects. The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th century BCE, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. It presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where more modern spelling requires it (see below). Roman script, dates to the 7th century BCE.]] Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example Protosinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the ostraka found near Lachish which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Tanakh, though the time at which it was written is a matter of dispute (see dating the Bible for details). The earliest extant copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. The formal language of the latter Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either derived from "Aram Naharayim", Upper Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," the ancient name for Syria). The Persian Empire, which had captured Babylonia a few decades later under Cyrus, adopted Aramaic as the official language. Aramaic is also a North-West Semitic language, quite similar to Hebrew. Aramaic has contributed many words and expressions to Hebrew, mainly as the language of commentary in the Talmud and other religious works. In addition to numerous words and expressions, Hebrew also borrowed the Aramaic writing system. Although the original Aramaic letter forms were derived from the same Phoenician alphabet that was used in ancient Israel, they had changed significantly, both in the hands of the Mesopotamians and of the Jews, assuming the forms familiar to us today around the first century CE. Writings of that era (most notably, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran) are written in a script very similar to the "square" one still used today.

Later history

The Jews living in the Persian Empire adopted Aramaic, and Hebrew quickly fell into disuse. It was preserved, however, as the literary language of Bible study. Aramaic became the vernacular language of the renewed Judaea for the following 700 years. Famous works written in Aramaic include the Targum, the Talmud and several of Flavius Josephus' books (several of the latter were not preserved, however, in the original.) Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews gradually began to disperse from Judaea into foreign countries (this dispersion was hastened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem (and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina) in 135 CE after putting down Bar Kokhba's revolt.) For many hundreds of years Aramaic remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews, and Lishana Deni, one of several Judæo-Aramaic languages, is a modern descendant that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and many non-Jews) from the area known as Kurdistan; however, it gradually gave way to Arabic, as it had given way to other local languages in the countries to which the Jews had gone. Hebrew was not used as a mother tongue for roughly 1800 years. However the Jews have always devoted much effort to maintaining high standards of literacy among themselves, the main purpose being to let any Jew read the Hebrew Bible and the accompanying religious works in the original (see rabbinic literature, Codes of Jewish law, The Jewish Bookshelf). It is interesting to note that the languages that the Jews adopted from their adopted nations, namely Ladino and Yiddish were not directly connected to Hebrew (the former being based on Spanish and Arabic borrowings, latter being a remote dialect of Middle High German), however, both were written from right to left using the Hebrew script. Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different countries, particularly for the purpose of international trade. The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who from about the seventh to the tenth centuries CE devised detailed markings to indicate vowels, stress, and cantillation (recitation methods). The original Hebrew texts used only consonants, and later some consonants were used to indicate long vowels. By the time of the Masoretes this text was considered too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters.

Revival

cantillation The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר בן־יהודה). He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 emigrated to Eretz Israel, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by more modern grammar and style, in the writings of people like Achad Ha-Am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904-1905 "Second aliyah" that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the new and better organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous, many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of pre-state Israel who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that exists today. The results of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.

Modern Hebrew

Ben-Yehuda based Modern Hebrew on Biblical Hebrew. Often new words were coined by applying unused word-patterns to existing roots (Biblical k-t-v, "write," gave rise to modern Hebrew hikhtiv, "dictated," and hitkatev, "corresponded.") When this did not suffice and the Committee set out to invent a new word for a certain concept, it searched through the Biblical word-indexes and foreign dictionaries, particularly Arabic. While Ben-Yehuda preferred Semitic roots to European ones, the abundance of European Hebrew speakers led to the introduction of numerous foreign words. Other changes which had taken place as Hebrew came back to life were the systematization of the grammar - the Biblical syntax was sometimes limited and ambiguous -- and the adoption of standard Western punctuation. Modern Hebrew shows influences from Russian (for example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation); German (particularly in combination words like "tapuakh-adama," meaning potato (German Erdapfel , earth-apple) or "iton" (German Zeitung, news-ity, news-paper). English has been a very strong influence, both from British influence during the period of the Mandate and American influence in the present day. Finally, Arabic, being the language of numerous Mizrahic and Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as well as of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has also had an important influence on Hebrew, especially in slang (for example, "sababa", meaning "excellent", or "ya'alla", meaning "come on".) Due to its many influences and its youth, Modern Hebrew has many characteristics which are distinctly not Semitic. At the phonetic level, it has abandoned the pharyngeal and emphatic consonants (in most pronunciations). It also uses the occasional foreign morpheme, in words such as רכבל ("rakevel") (meaning "cable car", formed by adding a lamed to the word for "vehicle") and רמזור ("ramzor") (meaning "traffic light", formed by adding a vav and a resh to the root for "hinting" and "allusion"). Even so, the Hebrew preserved part of the prominent characteristics of the Semitic languages. One of the main questions which occupying the researchers of the Modern Hebrew is how much the Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language. Another non-Semitic property of Modern Hebrew is the pronunciation of certain letters. For instance, the letter Heth (ח) now sounds like Khaf (כ), the letter 'Ayin (ע) now sounds like (sometimes) Alef (א), Qof (ק) sounds like Kaf (כּ), and Thav (ת) sounds like Teth (ט). Modern Hebrew is printed with a script known as "square". It is the same script, ultimately derived from Aramaic, that was used for copying of Bible books in Hebrew for two thousand years. This script also has a cursive version, which is used for handwriting. Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rachel, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernihovsky, Lea Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman. Hebrew was also the language of hundreds of authors, one of whom is the Nobel Prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Hebrew language in the USSR

, Yevsektsiya The Soviet authorities considered Hebrew a "reactionary language" since it was associated with both Judaism and Zionism, and it was officially banned by the Narkompros (Commissariat of Education) as early as 1919. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries. Despite numerous protests in the West, teachers and students who attempted to study Hebrew language were pilloried and sentenced for "counter revolutionary" and later for "anti-Soviet" activities.

Dialects

According to Ethnologue, dialects of Hebrew include Standard Hebrew (General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew), Oriental Hebrew (Arabized Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew). In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad. It was influenced by the Yiddish language. Sephardi Hebrew language is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all that different from it, although traditionally it has had a greater range of phonemes. It was influenced by the Ladino language. Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects (including Yemenite) spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. It was influenced by the Arabic language. Nearly every immigrant to Israel is encouraged to adopt Standard Hebrew as their daily language. Phonologically, this "dialect" may most accurately be described as an amalgam of pronunciations preserving Sephardic vowel sounds and Ashkenazic consonant sounds—its recurring feature being simplification of differences among a wide array of pronunciations. This simplifying tendency also accounts for the collapse of the Ashkenazic /t/ and /s/ pronunciations of unaspirated and aspirated ת into the single phoneme /t/. Most Sephardic dialects differentiated between these two pronunciations as /t/ and /θ/. Within Israel, the pronunciation of "Standard Hebrew", however, more often reflects the national or ethnic origin of the individual speaker, rather than the specific recommendations of the Academy. For this reason, over half the population pronounces ר as , (a uvular trill, as in Yiddish and some varieties of German) or as (a uvular fricative, as in French or many varieties of German), rather than as /r/, an apical trill, as in Spanish. The pronunciation of this phoneme is often used as a determinant among Israelis when ascertaining the national origin of perceived foreigners.

Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew

See main article Jewish languages Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim, and Judaeo-Arabic were all highly influenced by Hebrew. Although none are completely derived from Hebrew, they all make extensive use of Hebrew loanwords. In a less direct manner, the revival of Hebrew is often cited by proponents of International auxiliary languages as the best proof that languages long dead, with small communities, or modified or created artificially can become living languages used by a large number of people.

Sounds

Hebrew has two kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra‘) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘el). The former is more frequent. Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable; however due to the fact that Modern Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are often ignored in everyday speech. Interestingly enough, the rules that specify the vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mil‘el-stressed ókhel (="food") and milra‘-stressed okhèl (="eats", masculine) are written in the same way. Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

Vowels

vowel length The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu‘ot. The marks for these vowels are called Niqqud. Modern Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes:
- /a/ (as in "car") - The vowels qamatz and patakh
- /e/ (as in "set") - The vowels seggol and tzereh
- /i/ (as in "beak")- The vowel khiriq
- /o/ (as in "horn")- The vowel kholam
- /u/ (as in "room")- The vowels shuruq and qubbutz In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (hataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew. Hebrew phonetics include a special feature called shva. According to "Ha-Yesod, the Fundamentals of Hebrew" by Luba Uveeler and Norman M. Broznick, this feature is pronounced "Shva" and is spelled Shin Vav He. There are two kinds of shva: resting (nax) and moving (na' ). The resting shva is pronounced as a brief stop of speech. The moving shva sounds much like the English a in about. Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (qal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (hazaq or dagesh forte). There are two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (hazaq tavniti) and complementing heavy (hazaq mashlim). The light affects the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ in the beginning of a word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy emphases belong to certain vowel patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below), and correspond originally to doubled consonants. Complementing strengthening is added when vowel assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of (former) allophones is pronounced. Interestingly enough, historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ used to have strengthened versions of their own, however they had disappeared from virtually all the spoken dialects of Hebrew. All other consonants except gutturals may receive the heavy emphasis, as well. One-letter words are always attached to the following word. Such words include: the definite article h (="the"); prepositions b (="in"), m (="from"), l (="to"); conjunctions sh (="that"), k (="as", "like"), v (="and"). The vowel that follows the letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the presence of a definite article which may be swallowed by the one-letter word. The rules for the prepositions are complicated and vary with the formality of speech. In most cases they are followed by a moving schwa, and for that reason they are pronounced as be, me and le. In more formal speech, if a preposition is put before a word which begins with a moving schwa, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial consonant is weakened), but in colloquial speech these changes do not occur. For example, colloquial be-kfar (="in a village") becomes bi-khfar. If l or b are followed by the definite article ha, their vowel changes to /a/. Thus
- be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore me-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the plane". :
- indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct

Consonants

The Hebrew word for consonants is ‘itsurim (עיצורים). ע was once pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Modern Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) reading tradition ignores this; however, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern and North African Jews) and Israeli Arabs accent these phonemes in a traditional semitic fashion which resembles Arabic `ain ع. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized g. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it as "ng" in "sing" — a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italki tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. Postalveolar sounds (with the exception of ) are not native to Hebrew, and only found in borrowings. The pairs (/b/, /v/), (/k/, /x/), (/p/, /f/), written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with ), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings.

Historical sound changes

Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew .
- BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/ into SIH /v/
- BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with into SIH /x/
- BH /t/ and have merged into SIH /t/
- BH and have merged into SIH
- BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate phonemes

Grammar

See main article Hebrew grammar Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the formation of the verbs, nouns and the genitive construct, which is called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are often combined with hyphens.
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form. A similar system is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in their character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. Biblical Hebrew text contains nothing but consonants and spaces, and most modern Hebrew texts contain only consonants, spaces and western-style punctuation. A pointing system (nikud, from the root word meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century C.E. is used to indicate vowels and syllabic stresses in some religious books, and is almost always found in modern poetry, children's literature, and texts for beginning students of Hebrew. The system is also used sparingly to avoid certain ambiguities of meaning — such as when context is insufficient to distinguish between two identically spelled words — and in the transliteration of foreign names. All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter. Although a single letter might represent two phonemes — the letter "bet," for example, represents both /b/ and /v/ — the two sounds are always related "hard" (plosive) and "soft" (fricative) forms, their pronunciaton being very often determined by context. In fully pointed texts, the hard form normally has a dot, known as a dagesh, in its center. The letters hei, vav and yud can represent consonantal sounds (/h/, /v/ and /j/, respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter case, these letters are called "emot qria" ("matres lectionis" in Latin, "mothers of reading" in English). The letter hei at the end of a word usually indicates a final /a/, which in turn is usually indicative of feminine gender. Vav may represent /o/ or /u/, and yod may represent /i/. There is no consonantal marker for /e/. In some modern Israeli texts, the letter alef is used to indicate long /a/ sounds in foreign names, particularly those of Arabic origin. Terminal syllabic emphasis is most common. Fully pointed texts will note variations with a vertical line placed underneath the first consonant of the emphasized syllable, to the left of the vowel mark if there is one.
Romanization
See also Romanization of Hebrew The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters. The most accurate method is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the IPA is not well known, and is often considered cumbersome for transcribing pronunciations for a general audience. Therefore this article uses a different system to express Hebrew pronunciation, and at least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the following:
- The letter tzadi (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/, although "ts" or "tz" is usually acceptable.
- The letter ‘ayin (ע) is transcribed ', the same as alef. In word-final position, this phoneme is always preceded by the vowel /a/.
- The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh", and the letter sin as "s".
- Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
- The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, in those cases where it marks feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/).
- The letter chet (ח) is usually transcribed by "ch" as there is no "ch" sound in hebrew. "kh" is usually acceptable but not as common. "h" is occasionally used but often avoided as "h" is also used for he (ה).
- The letter qof (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is pronounced /k/ by many speakers).
- Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-) from their subject.
- Stresses and schwas are not marked.
- The vowels are always written.
- The letter yod is usually transcribed by "y".
See also

- Common phrases in Hebrew
- Cantillation
- Hebrew alphabet
- Niqqud (vowel points)
- Samaritan Hebrew
- The study of Hebrew
- Hebrew literature
Notes
# [http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/ben-yehuda/ben-yehuda.htm Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew Language] by Libby Kantorwitz # [http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/ZA/SiteE/pShowView.aspx?GM=Y&ID=48&Teur=Protest%20against%20the%20suppression%20of%20Hebrew%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union%20%201930-1931 Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union 1930-1931] signed by Albert Einstein, among others # Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.
External links

- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=heb Ethnologue report for Hebrew]
- [http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/english.html Academy of Hebrew Language], the Institute which prescribes standards for modern Hebrew grammar, orthography, transliteration, and punctuation based upon the study of Hebrew's historical development.
- History of the Hebrew Language
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/history_of_hebrew.htm History of the Hebrew Language Steinberg]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/rabin_he.htm Short History of the Hebrew Language Rabin]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israeli_hebrew_tene.htm Israeli Hebrew Tene]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israel_lang_policy_rosen.htm Israel Language Policy and Linguistics Rosén]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_words_history.htm Words and their History Kutscher]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_slang_sappan.htm Hebrew Slang and Foreign Loan Words Sappan ]
- Grammars
- [http://foundationstone.com.au/HtmlSupport/FrameSupport/onlineHebrewTutorialFrame.html Online Hebrew Tutorial] (foundationstone)
- [http://perso.wanadoo.fr/babel-site/ Hebrew is easy] (babel-site)
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/gk_cont.htm Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar]
- Dictionaries
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon1/index.htm Root-based] (Maskilon)
- [http://milon.morfix.co.il/ Word-search] English-Hebrew and Hebrew-English (Morfix)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon3/index.htm Hebrew-English] (Maskilon)
- [http://www.faithofgod.net/davar/ Hebrew-English] (DAVAR freeware, english)
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Hebrew-english/ Hebrew-English] (Webster's Rosetta Edition)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon4/index.htm English-Hebrew] (Maskilon)
- General
- [http://www.yiwoodmere.org/library/cybrary/hebrew.html Learning Hebrew - Links], Young Israel
- [http://www.yomanim.com Hebrew Writings and Diaries]
- [http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/katmandu/hebrew/atoc.html Hebrew Abbreviations], Princeton University Library
- [http://www.mikledet.com Mikledet.com]: Send Hebrew emails without having a Hebrew keyboard.
- [http://www.amhaaretz.org/translit/ Hebrew translit]: type in Hebrew using an English keyboard
- Category:Jewish languages Category:Judaism Category:Guttural R Category:Semitic languages Category:Canaanite languages Category:Languages of Israel ko:히브리어 ja:ヘブライ語 simple:Hebrew language th:ภาษาฮีบรู

Tiberian Hebrew

Tiberian Hebrew is an oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient forms of Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Tanakh, that was given written form by masoretic scholars in the Jewish community at Tiberias in the early Middle Ages, beginning in the 8th century. This written form employed symbols, called niqqudot (for vowels) and cantillation signs, added to the Hebrew letters. Though the written symbols came into use in the early Middle Ages, the oral tradition they reflect is apparently much older, with ancient roots. The Tiberian system of vocalization for the Tanakh represented its own local tradition. Two other local traditions that created written systems during the same period are referred to geographically as the vocalization of the "Land of Israel" (not identical to Tiberias) and the Babylonian vocalization. The former system had little or no historical influence, but the Babylonian system was dominant in some areas for many centuries, and even survives to this day. Unlike the Tiberian system, which mostly places vowel points under the Hebrew letters, the Babylonian system mostly places them above the letters, and is thus called the "supralinear" vowelisation. As mentioned above, the Tiberian points were designed to reflect a specific oral tradition for reading the Tanakh. Later they were applied to other texts (one of the earliest being the Mishnah), and used widely by Jews in other places with different oral traditions for how to read Hebrew. Thus the Tiberian vowel points and cantillation signs became a common part of Hebrew writing. Category:Jewish texts Category:Hebrew language Category:Jewish languages

Amarna letters

The Amarna letters is the name popularly given to an archive of correspondence, mostly diplomatic, found at Amarna, the modern name for the capital of the Egyptian New Kingdom primarily from the reign of pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten (1369 - 1353 BCE). The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, being mostly written in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets. The known tablets currently total 382 in number, 24 further tablets having been recovered since the Norwegian Assyriologist Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon's landmark edition of the Amarna correspondence, Die El-Amarna Tafeln in two volumes (1907 and 1915).

The Letters

1915 These letters, consisting of cuneiform tablets mostly written in Akkadian, the language of diplomacy for this period, were first discovered by local Egyptians around 1887, who secretly dug most of them from the ruined city and sold them on the antiquities market. Once the location where they were found was determined, the ruins were explored for more. The first archeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was William Flinders Petrie in 1891-92, who found 21 fragments. Émile Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archeology in Cairo acquired two more tablets in 1903. Since Knudtzon's edition, some 24 more tablets, or fragments of tablets have been found either in Egypt or identified in the collections of various museums. The tablets originally recovered by the natives have been scattered into museums in Cairo, Europe and the United States: 202 or 203 are at the Vorderasiatischen Museum in Berlin; 49 or 50 at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; seven at the Louvre; three to the Moscow Museum; and one is currently in the collection of the Oriental Institute in Chicago. The full archive, which includes correspondence from the preceding reign of Amenhotep III as well, contained over three hundred diplomatic letters; the remainder are a miscellany of literary or educational materials. These tablets shed light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, the Mitanni, the Hittites, Syria, Palestine and Cyprus (see Alashiya), and his representative in the Canaan region. They are important for establishing both the history and chronology of the period. Letters from the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I anchor Akhenaten's reign to the mid-14th century BCE. Here was found the first mentions of a Palestinian group known as the Habiru, whose possible connection with the later Hebrews remains debated. Other rulers include Tushratta of the Mittani, one Lib'ayu whom David Rohl has argued should be identified with the Biblical king Saul, and the extensive correspondence of the querulous king Rib-Hadda of Byblos, who over 58 letters constantly pleads for Egyptian military help.

Chronology

William L. Moran summarizes the state of the chronology of these tablets as follows: :Despite a long history of inquiry, the chronology of the Amarna letters, both relative and absolute, presents many problems, some of bewildering complexity, that still elude definitive solution. Consensus obtains only about what is obvious, certain established facts, and these provide only a broad framework within which many and often quite different reconstructions of the course of events reflected in the Amarna letters are possible and have been defended. From internal evidence, the earliest possible date for any of this correspondence is late in the reign of Amenhotep III (possibly as early as his 30th regnal year); the latest date any of these letters were written is the desertion of the city of Amarna, which is commonly believed to have happened in the first year of the reign of Tutankhamun. (However, Moran notes that some authorities believe one tablet – EA 16 – may have been addressed to Tutankhamun's successor Ay.)

Bibliography

Translations

- William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ISBN 0801842514

Research and Analysis

- Goren, Y., Finkelstein, I. & Na’aman, N., Inscribed in Clay - Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Tel Aviv: Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 2004. ISBN 9652660205

External links

- [http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html Encylopedia of el-Amarna] Contains summaries of the letters.
- [http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/projects/amarna.html Mineralogical and Chemical Study of the Amarna Tablets - Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets] - University of Tel Aviv web page Category:Ancient Egypt Category:Amarna Period Category:Historical documents ja:アマルナ文書

Israel

The State of Israel (Hebrew: , transliteration: Medinat Yisra'el; Arabic: دَوْلَةْ إِسْرَائِيل, transliteration: Dawlat Isrā'īl) is a country in the Middle East on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a parliamentary democracy and the world's only Jewish state. The name "Israel" means "One Who Struggles with God," and is rooted in the Biblical passage Genesis 32:28 wherein Jacob is renamed Israel after struggling with an unnamed assailant. Israel is bordered by Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip in the south-west, and has coastlines on the Mediterranean in the west and the Gulf of Eilat (also known as the Gulf of Aqaba) in the south. Israel captured the West Bank and the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War of 1967. It withdrew all troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip on September 12 2005. The future status of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights remains to be determined.

History

Historical roots

Most believe that the land on which the State of Israel now exists was the birthplace of Judaism in the 10th century BCE or earlier, although some scholars dispute this. The earliest mention of the name 'Israel' is in Ancient Egyptian accounts of conquered lands in Asia minor, dating back to about 1500 BCE. For over 3,000 years, Jews have held the Land of Israel to be their homeland, both as a Holy Land and as a Promised Land, while non-Jews have also later maintained similar claims. The Land of Israel holds a special place in Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism's most important sites including the remains of the First and Second Temple. Starting around 1200 BCE, a series of Jewish kingdoms and states existed intermittently in the region for over a millennium until the failure of the Great Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire resulted in widescale expulsion of Jews (see Destruction of Jerusalem). Under Roman, Byzantine, and (briefly) Persian rule, Jewish presence in the province dwindled, but the Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, two of Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in Palestine during this period. The Arabs conquered the land from the Eastern Roman Empire in 638 CE and the area was ruled by various Arab states before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Throughout the centuries, the size of the Jewish population in the land fluctuated widely, with the population in the region of present day Israel numbering approximately 20-25,000 in 1881 of a total population of 470,000.

Zionism and Aliyah

Ottoman Empire on May 14 1948 in Tel Aviv.]] The first wave of Jewish emigration to Israel, or Aliyah (עלייה) started in the late 1800s as Jews fled persecution. The end of the 19th century saw the founding of Zionism, the national movement to create a Jewish political entity in Palestine, leading to the Second Aliyah during the first two decades of the 20th century with the influx of around 40,000 Jews. In 1917 the British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour issued the historic Balfour Declaration that "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". In 1920 Palestine became a League of Nations mandate administered by Britain (see British Mandate of Palestine). Jewish immigration resumed in third and fourth waves after World War I. Later, the rise of Nazism in 1933 led to a fifth wave of Aliyah, and the Jews in the region increased from 11% of the population in 1922 to 30% by 1940. The subsequent Holocaust in Europe led to additional immigration from other parts of Europe. By the end of World War II, the number of Jews in Palestine was approximately 600,000. In 1939 the British abandoned the idea of a Jewish national home, and abandoned partition and negotiations in favour of the unilaterally-imposed White Paper of 1939, which capped Jewish immigration. Its other stated policy was to establish a system under which both Jews and Arabs were to share one government. As a result of impending world war, the plan was never fully implemented, but the White Paper policy was implemented well into the end of WWII, and enforced even when refugees who survived the Holocaust were fleeing from Nazi persecution. (See Struma article.)

Establishment of the State and the War of Independence

In 1947, following increasing levels of violence by militant groups, alongside unsuccessful efforts to reconcile the Jewish and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw from the Palestine Mandate. Fulfillment of the 1947 UN Partition Plan would have divided the mandated territory into two states, Jewish and Arab, giving about half the land area to each state. Under this plan, Jerusalem was intended to be an international region under UN administration to avoid conflict over its status. Immediately following the adoption of the Partition Plan by the United Nations General Assembly, the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the plan to create the as-yet-unnamed Jewish state and launched a guerilla war. On May 14 1948, before the expiring of the British Mandate of Palestine on midnight of the May 15 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. The surrounding Arab states supported the Palestinian Arabs in rejecting both the Partition Plan and the establishment of Israel, and the armies of six Arab nations attacked the State of Israel. Over the next 15 months Israel captured an additional 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan river and annexed it to the new state. Most of the Arab population fled or were expelled during the war. The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in a lasting displacement that persists to this day. 1948 edition of Yishuv newspaper The Palestine Post, soon renamed into The Jerusalem Post. In the news: Egyptian Air Force bombs Tel-Aviv, Transjordan shells Jerusalem. 15 May was Shabbat.]] Immigration of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab lands doubled Israel's population within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000 Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries, migrated to Israel (with another 300,000 or so settling in France and North America, leaving only a tiny remnant, mostly in Morocco and Tunisia). Israel's Jewish population continued to grow at a very high rate for some years, and was fed by further waves of Jewish immigration following the collapse of the USSR.

Wars

The refusal of Arab countries to recognize the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has been a source of repeated wars and other conflicts with Arab nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The state of war between Egypt and Israel ended with the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty on March 26, 1979. The state of war with Jordan officially ended with the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace on October 26 1994. Sporadic negotiations with Lebanon and Syria have not as yet resulted in peace treaties. Israel is currently also embroiled in an ongoing conflict with Palestinians in the territories controlled since the Six Day War in 1967, despite the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13 1993, and the ongoing efforts of Israeli, Palestinian and global peacemakers. Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank to become part of a (preferably contiguous) future state. Israel currently plans on expanding existing large West Bank settlement blocs, and maintains the current impasse in the peace process —negotiations toward a permanent peace treaty featuring a two-state solution— cannot be restarted until the Palestinian government dismantles terrorist groups.

Articles related to the wars

- 1948 Arab-Israeli War "The Independence War" (see also: 1949 Armistice Agreements). Also called "War of Liberation" מלחמת העצמאות או מלחמת השחרור
- 1956 Suez War "Operation Kadesh" מבצע קדש או מלחמת סיני
- 1967 Six Day War מלחמת ששת הימים
- 1970 War of Attrition מלחמת ההתשה
- 1973 Yom Kippur War מלחמת יום כיפור
- 1982 Lebanon War "Operation Peace For Galilee" מבצע שלום הגליל
- First Intifada אינתיפדה
- 1990/1 Gulf War מלחמת המפרץ
- al-Aqsa Intifada אינתיפדת אל-אקצא The Israeli Defense Forces codenamed it "אירועי גיאות ושפל" ("Ebb and Tide events") but it is unofficially referred to as the Oslo War in some Israeli circles.

Politics and law

Israel is a parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage and proportional representation. Israel's legislative branch is a 120-member parliament known as the Knesset. Membership in the Knesset is allocated to parties based on their proportion of the vote. Elections to the Knesset are normally held every four years, but the Knesset can decide to dissolve itself ahead of time by a simple majority, known as a vote of no-confidence. The President of Israel is head of state, serving as a largely ceremonial figurehead. The President selects the leader of the majority party or ruling coalition in the Knesset as the Prime Minister, who serves as head of government.²

Constitution

Israel has not completed a written constitution. Its government is based on the laws of the Knesset, especially by "Basic Laws of Israel", which are special laws (currently there are 15 of them), by the Knesset legislature which will become the future official constitution. In mid-2003, the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee began [http://www.cfisrael.org drafting a full written Constitution to be proposed to the Knesset floor.] This effort is still underway as of late 2005. The declaration of the State of Israel has a significance in this matter as well. Israel's legal system is a western legal system best classified as "mixed": it has a strong Anglo-American influence, but in some parts has borrowed heavily from civil law tradition. Despite the Anglo-American influence, the jury system was not adopted in Israel, and court cases are decided by professional judges.

Judiciary and Legal System

The Judiciary branch of Israel is made of a three-tier system of courts: at the lowest level are the Magistrate Courts, situated in most cities. Above them, serving both as an appellate court and as a court of first instance are the District Courts (six of them, situated in the six judicial districts of Jerusalem, South, Tel Aviv, Centre, Haifa and Nazareth). At the top of the judicial pyramid is the Supreme Court seated in Jerusalem. The current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is Aharon Barak. Religious tribunals (Jewish, Sharia'a, Druze and Christian) have exclusive jurisdiction on annulment of marriages. The Israeli Supreme Court serves a dual role as the highest court of appeals and as the body for a separate institution known as the High Court of Justice. The HCOJ has the unique responsibility of addressing petitions presented to the Court by individual citizens. The respondents to these petitions are usually Governmental agencies (including the Israel Defense Forces). The result of such petitions, which are decided by the HCOJ, may be an instruction by the HCOJ to the relevant Governmental agency to act in a manner prescribed by the HCOJ. Judges are elected by a committee made of Members of the Knesset (Parliament), Supreme Courts Judges and Members of the Israeli Bar. According to the Courts Law, judges retire at the age of 70. Registrars to all courts are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with the approval of the Minister of Justice. Israel's legal system is part of the Western legal systems. It is a mixed system, influenced by Anglo-American, Continental and Jewish law principles. As for the Anglo-American influence, the Israeli legal system is based on the principle of stare-decisis (precedent). It is an adversarial system, not an inquisitorial one, in the sense that the parties (e.g. plaintiff and defendant) are the ones that bring the evidence before the court. The court does not conduct any independent investigation on the case. There is no jury in Israeli courts, and cases are decided upon by professional judges. As for Civil Law influences, several major Israeli statutes (such as the Contract Law) are based on Civil Law principles. Israeli statute body is not comprised of Codes, but rather of individual statutes. However, a Civil Code draft has been completed recently, and is planned to become a bill.

Military

Israel's military consists of a unified Israel Defense Forces (IDF), known in Hebrew by the acronym Tzahal (צה"ל). Historically, there have been no separate Israeli military services. The Navy and Air Force are subordinate to the Army. There are other paramilitary government agencies which deal with different aspects of Israel's security (such as MAGAV and the Shin Bet). See further discussion: Israel Security Forces. The IDF is considered one of the strongest military forces in the Middle East and ranks among the most battle-trained armed forces in the world, having had to defend the country in five major wars. The IDF's main resource is the training quality of its soldiers, but it also relies heavily on high-tech weapons systems (both developed and manufactured in Israel for its specific needs, and also largely imported from the United States), and expert manpower, rather than possession of overwhelming manpower. Most Israelis, males and females, are drafted into the military at the age of 18. Exceptions are Israeli Arabs, confirmed pacifists, those who cannot serve due to injury or disability, and women who declare themselves religiously observant. Compulsory service is three years for men, and 20 months for women. Circassians and Bedouin actively enlist in the IDF. Since 1956, Druze men have been conscripted in the same way as Jewish men, at the request of the Druze community. Men studying full-time in religious institutions can get a deferment from conscription; most Haredi Jews extend these deferments until they are too old to be conscripted, a practice that has fueled much controversy in Israel. Following compulsory service, Israeli men become part of the IDF reserve forces, and are usually required to serve several weeks every year as reservists, until their 40's.

Geography

Haredi Jews The total area of the sovereign territory of Israel —excluding all territories captured by Israel in 1967 — is 20,770 (20,330 land) square km; the total area under Israeli law —including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — is 22,145 (21,671 land) square km; the total area under Israeli control — including the military-controlled and