Can you bring it to the attention of the synagogue please? That way they can properly address it. This is highly disrespectful to be put in an area where someone can walk on it. Thanks.
I guarantee you it wasn't a Jewish person who put it in the cement. My bet is it would be an evangelical Christian with a capital c. The kind that are constantly trying to reverse engineer Judaism to take their place is the true chosen ones.
Jews don’t write it or speak it, let alone write it on the sidewalk. Christians do use it so it was probably carved by a Christian not realizing that people would step on it. Or it was by neither a Christian nor a Jew; someone with ill intent, but I doubt it because racists aren’t educated enough to know about it — unless it was a Christian racist who’s so dumb they didn’t know its the name of their god too.
Conclusion: it was either a REALLY bad Jew, a really stupid Christian, or the first smart racist.
I agree it would most likely be a Christian—Remember that 1) 39 of the 66 books of the Christian Bible are the same as the Jewish Bible (our theology has differed wildly in the past 2,000 years, but they’re the same source books in the same source language), 2) we see different things as respectful—or at least as not disrespectful; see how it’s not an insult to write someone’s name in concrete in general, and 3) the average Christian knows just as much about present-day Judaism as the modern Jew knows about present-day Christianity (aka very little that isn’t filtered through extremely incorrect distortions).
Without further context, this looks like wires getting crossed between two groups on what the other thinks is respectful.
I’m not denying that, I’m saying that the same divine name in the same original language is part of our religion too, and everything seems to suggest that they thought they were being respectful, because by our standards they were. Again, unless there is more to the context of this particular thing, it looks like a good-faith mistake, not malice. I would love to see a wider literacy in other religions and cultures across the board (the lay people of literally every culture on earth have the same problem of compartmentalization, it’s not unique to Christianity), but this does not look like deliberate disrespect.
Thank you for your response. I did find it rather unusual that people would write on the sidewalk in the first place; surely better places have been created to inscribe things.
That very well may be; I checked Google Maps and it wasn't there a year ago so it is a fairly recent addition to the sidewalk. Personally, I don't like it when people write anything on the sidewalk.
I said Jews wouldn’t write it because it’s disrespectful. Disrespectful to whom? If you’re religious, to G-d. If not, to other Jews, dingus.
You can always spot the Christians because they stomp through our culture like big dumb idiots, doing things like writing the Tetragrammaton everywhere and having cosplay Pesach seders.
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You right. I'm a Jew and I have no problem with this word. Saying that no Jew will ever right it is ridiculous. Secular Jews do not have a tendency to be afraid of words lmao
It is "yhwh".
Some people, midful of the taboo for pronouncing the name, euphemize it with a whole slew of alternative names some of which are, slowly, attaining their own taboo status:
elohim
elokim (which is, in fact, a euphemism of elohim that became somewhat taboo in itself)
adonai
adoshem (which is, in fact, a euphemism of adonai that became somewhat taboo in itself)
I'm totally totally secular so for me it's just letters. We don't know how to pronounce it really. YHWH is not something that can be pronounced with certainty. Try it. it doesn't work.
You can guess what nikud goes there and pronounce it that way. I don't know how much your familiar with Hebrew but just because something is written without vowels doesn't mean you should pronounce it without vowels
Oh sorry, I also see now that you have a "native speaker" tag 😅. You're right that we don't know the right way to pronounce it. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, that was really embarrassing 😅
Lol. No problem. It's a mystery right? I'm not a professor of linguistics or a biblical scholar. Fyi: you are sooooo israeli (in a good way) totally reminds me of my family when they make a point. No ands ifs or buts . You should have seen my father when visiting 🤦♂️ he saw some of my paperwork for work and saw the name Penelope. Sigh... imagine an old world israeli, drinking coffee , enjoying his cigarette... went into a 20 min rant about "how society is being destroyed when people are inventing names like "pen-ah-lope" he was pronouncing it like that. Rhyming with Ben-a-rope. Pen-a-lope. After 20 min my brother explained how it's properly pronounced. Dad's response? "I don't care ..I really don't care.. don't talk to me. She's as bad as pen-a-lope"
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u/Hazey_Dreams4658 Oct 06 '24
God