Sunday, December 12, 2010
שاפוחלמ- are you getting me?
For the last few weeks, I have begun to dabble with modern Hebrew. The f
irst exercises consist in drawing enormous letters on pre-marked pieces of paper: you don’t have to understand what you are writing, just to draw nice signs. The next step is to identify words, using a list of well-known words such as Tel Aviv, coffee, banana. And there the problem starts: my textbook is small, the signs barely legible at the best of times, and ך and ן ,ו all look the same to me. I had a similar experience during my first time on the Moscow underground: Сокольническая and Кольцевая looked pretty much the same to me, especially with dim light and sweaty brows. So I panicked…my Hebrew studies are done at my desk, so the only reaction I showed was to close the book, frustrated, until the next day.
But it made me think: semantics, the study of meaning, tells us that there is a relationship between a signifier, such as a sign, letter or word and what they stand for. But for this relationship to be meaningful you need to be able to read the sign and to distinguish it from others. If “no parking” and “stop” signs look the same to you, you are pretty much unable to follow normal highway code and your drivers’ license should be removed. If you are unfamiliar with the meaning of a Celtic football shirt in Northern Ireland, you could end up with a broken nose if you wear one and enter the wrong part. “Lost in Translation” is based on the typical dilemma of signs having different meanings in different cultures.
Going further, some signs are not even seen as signs, just scribbles, if you don’t know what you are looking for. In the boy scouts, I learned a dozen signs or so, for example. It means “I accomplished my task and went home”. But the average forest hiker might not even notice the circle, since he is not looking for signs, and even when he stumbles upon them he does not interpret them as such; simply a silly little circle, either found at random or assembled by a playing child, with no meaning whatsoever.
During the four weeks before Christmas Christians traditionally focus on the truth of God’s coming into history. Not only do they think about Christmas (that is for later, beginning with 24th December), but also about the end of the world, when God is supposedly coming back and wrapping up this world. Christians believe that the return of Christ cannot be calculated via astronomic formulas, but that there will be signs of his coming which should make human beings alert and ready. In fact one of the things that human beings should do, according to the Bible, is to read the signs of the times, in order not to be caught unawares. But, and this is where Advent ties into my Hebrew studies, how can you look for signs if you don’t know what to look for. If ever scribble looks the same, if ever pile of rocks could be a message by your fellow boy scout, if a bow could mean a thousand things, how can you ever be sure. Well, you can’t!
The very fact that we don’t exactly know what we are looking for is supposed to make us more deliberate and attentive. I remember walking through the forest as a twelve year old explorer on some of those exercises and my eyes were wide open: every twig, ever rock, ever leaf was examined in order to make sure I was not missing something. This meant we had to walk more slowly, but also that we were significantly more attentive. As over time, as we grew better at orientee
ring, w e knew more where to look- so we got better. I think Advent is meant to be such a training period: the pace of life is supposed to slow down enough for us to live life more deliberately. As we do, we might just catch one or the other of the signs of the presence of God in this world. And as we apply to read these signs, we begin to discover a whole new alphabet. One of the books of the Bible says “The heavens declare the glory of God”, in other words for those who know how to read the alphabet creation is full of signs of God’s action. At the beginning it might fell as frustrating as being on the Moscow underground or learning Hebrew: but with a bit of practice, it could get quite exciting. Enjoy the rest of Advent!
