Welcome to the year 5766.

[narnee]

L'shanah tovah. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Hear the shofar sounding tekiah, shevarim, teruah, and tekiah gedolah. I was going to write the whole series of notes out but I can only recall the first fifteen or so from memory. Instead, you can hear two more shofars sounding out a series of notes here and hereFor all the goyim who

Comments

Funny, it doesn't feel like the future

[greylock]

I can't believe I just wasted 10 minutes trying to translate that into Klingon.
("tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhlaHbe'" - "I do not speak Klingon")

Have a good day, anyway.

[greylock]

What do you know? According to Wikipedia, the phrase goyim is idely viewed as disparaging.

Or not.

[narnee]

Whoa, that's one hell of an edit war. I'd mention that the basis of "goyim" being the plural for "goy" is still not a settled issue, and I don't believe it is the plural form, but I am so not getting involved in that mess.

The connotation of the word "goyim", like most Yiddish words, depends on the context in which the word is used. In particular, it's true that pretty much any descriptive word about an individual's identity can be seen as a pejorative, especially in a language so open to debate. I was always taught that "goyim" was simply a word that meant "non-Jew" and that's the way I use it.

However, I personally find the use of "goy" to be almost always pejorative, although it can be of the jokingly-pejorative or the outright derogatory, in similarity to words like "Yank" or "Pom." Others probably don't.

[hieroglyphe]

Hope you have a good time.

Yours,
A Goyim <-- Now's when I find out that's the plural...

:-)

[narnee]

A Goyim <-- Now's when I find out that's the plural...

My personal take on the word means you used it completely appropriately. :>

However, see my comment response to greylock above -- like most of Yiddish, whether "goyim" is the plural to "goy" or a separate word with different connotations which may or may not be dependent on context, is very much open to debate!

I think I forgot but now I remember...

[anna_phylaxis]

I successfully blew a shofar for the first time while I was up at Firefly this summer. I don't know if that's considered totally inappropriate, but I was with a whole mob of observant Jewish folks, and they wanted me to try. (It was harder than I thought it would be!) And this wasn't the only shofar there, since several of my blasts were answered from far off somewhere.

At one point on one night, I think everyone decided to grab whatever horn-like instrument they could find and blow till blue in the face. It sounded so utterly surreal. And loud. Oh, it was loud. Trumpet answering shofar answering didgeridoo, occasionally pierced by the sound of a bright and forceful ululation... next year, I gotta bring a bagpipe. Period.

[the_tatyana]

l'shanah tovah