Happy Chanuka!

I'd like to start out by thanking all of you - my loyal fans - who are reading this! This year, I was so busy that I completely forgot to celebrate my blog's third anniversary, which came and went back on September 22nd. Three years! That's a long time to keep a blog going, for some of us :) It's funny, I still think of myself as an amateur blogger, but even I know that just being here and posting regularly (more or less) for three years makes me somewhat established. And so I thank you all for sticking with me this long!


I also thank all of you who have sent me fantastic typos and demonstrations of the absurd! It's gotten so that there are too many of you to name, but you all know who you are. I'm honored that you think of me and my little blog when you see something that's just too ridiculous to be true :) Please feel free to keep sending me bloopers that you've seen: 321toby *at* gmail *dot* com. And to those of you who have sent me items that haven't yet been posted - never fear, they're coming!


And now, on to the show!


This week we've been celebrating Chanuka. (Back in fourth grade, Ms. Kornblatt taught us that any spelling of Chanuka that incorporated eight letters was acceptable. Here I am, actively ignoring her rule, and feeling quite guilty about it. I'm sorry, Ms. Kornblatt! This one just looks best to me.) Chanuka is the Festival of Lights, and I was patiently looking for a Chanuka typo to post, when I discovered that Hannah over at A Mother in Israel had already found a great one! She very generously allowed me to repost it here, and so I present you with these boxes of wicks that she found. These are standard wicks that float on oil - there's a round stopper that does the floating, and a wick that is threaded through a hole in the center of the stopper. Not difficult. Let's see what the directions have to say for themselves - first in English:

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Hannah was kind enough to insert We’re not going to comment about spelling or vocabulary, okay? But I have to say that I really like the "equale" here - I find it very elegant :) Anyway, apparently the wicks weren't lighting well, and that's when they noticed that the Hebrew directions were actually different than the English ones!

See, here it says to leave 1/3 of the wick above the stopper, and 2/3 below, saturated in the oil. Not exactly the "equale" version mentioned in the English version. A conspiracy to undermine Anglo lighting? Or just a blooper? Let's wait and see, here's another brand that she found - first the English:

This twig cracked me up more than all the others. It's referring, you understand, to the wick. Pretty silly :) Anyway, we all understand the directions here? Okay then, here comes the Hebrew:

Wow - the Hebrew here asks us to leave 1/3 of the wick below the stopper, and 2/3 above!  Really, one wouldn't think that wick directions would be so confusing or complex. And one, of course, would be wrong :)


Here's hoping that by tomorrow night, the eighth and final Chanuka night of this year, we'll all have figured out how to light our flames!


~~~~~


By funny coincidence, we lit Chanuka candles at our cousins' house last night, in Eli. Why is this a coincidence? Because our hostess was our wonderful cousin Rena, who happened to have been interviewed by that same aforementioned Hannah on her other blog, Cooking Manager, just the same day! You can read the interview here.

Anyway, we very much enjoyed our vegan meal at their house - complete with super-delicious everything, and everything vegan: chili, cornbread, potato latkes, sweet potato latkes, sour cream, and even sufganiyot for dessert! And as always, we had a blast hanging out with all of our fun Eli cousins. But as a surprise bonus, I found this wonderful typo in the kitchen:

Now, please don't get me started on the whole bulghur/burgol thing. I'll just quickly sum up: for reasons that I cannot explain, what we know to be bulghur in English is called burgol in Hebrew. I don't understand it, but I've come to accept it. (Maybe Balashon can advise?) But I don't think even Israelis would accept it being called ourgul - that's just crazy talk :) 

Happy Chanuka to all! 

Look out!

My friend Yoel (remember him?) was at the Dead Sea recently. Lucky him! And lucky all of us... he brought me back a sign! Check this out:

Wowee. Now granted, the Hebrew word tovani used here is a little tricky to translate - it comes from the root "drown," but would really be translated as boggy, or swampy. Kind of "drownable," if you will. Actually, come to think of it, chol tovani is quicksand - I wonder if that's what they're trying to say. Hmm. Well, whatever it is they're warning us about, it certainly is not drawning mud. Put in a little effort, guys, please? This is seemingly a potentially lifesaving sign - doesn't it warrant a quick dictionary look-up? Oh, I guess not :)


I also like the "Attention!!!" used here. First off, this was apparently written by someone who just loves exclamation points. But still, wouldn't "Danger!" "Warning!" or "Look Out!" be more appropriate here? Are we calling attention to the mud? Or are we asking the mud to stand at attention?


All in all, an excellent specimen - thank you, Yoel! And have a great week, everyone!

This may be just the one for you!

There's a guy in our neighborhood who works in local real estate, and posts his listings quite often to our local email chat. The thing is, there are a lot of native English speakers in our town, and so he thoughtfully uses Google Translate to post in English as well. So considerate of him! I first noticed the resulting trouble a couple of years back, though, when he posted that a particular apartment had a:

Conveniently located near hope? Huh? Then I realized that he had translated from Mikva, our Jewish ritual bath - which looks quite like the Hebrew word for hope, and had evidently slipped through. Ridiculous, right? Can't get worse than that, right? But each time he posts, lo and behold, I find something new. 


Almost every post has

And naturally

But sometimes, if you're lucky, you might get a:

That's surely helpful. 


Perhaps you're looking for

That sounds pretty good, right? But what if I offered you

Then you'd really have to think about it. 


There's certainly no beating a

I mean, who could possibly turn that down? And yet, I find this one almost as tempting:

Right? Come on, confess - aren't you just a little bit curious to see the giant?

You might think that in the market nowadays, people don't really expect payment - but it turns out:

Anyway, I've been saving these up for as long as I can remember. And then, when I saw this one last week, I thought - Toby! This is it! 

This is the one that might actually get me to leave my beloved apartment! I mean, really! Even re-reading it now, I'm not sure why I haven't yet called. What an amazing perk!

Okay, all you Hebrew speakers out there - can any of you guess the origins of these mixed-up phrases?

Have a great week, everyone!

Goodbye, RivkA

Well, I've been in kind of a slump. We were shocked and saddened to hear this past Friday that our friend from so long ago, RivkA Matitya, had left this world. We used to know RivkA back when we hung out in the Bnei Akiva building in Jerusalem in the early 90's - she was always there in the Yavne Olami office, where she spent so much of her time. She was always a burst of smiles and energy, and we were happy to talk with her, again and again!

Then we lost contact, and when I first heard about the Coffee and Chemo blog, I was sad to realize that it was written by that same sweet friend of ours from way back. Until I started actually reading her blog, and saw that RivkA wasn't in any kind of a slump herself - she was still all smiles and energy, but using it now to live her more adult life with her husband and kids. She was seemingly a whirlwind of energy, running from event to event, loving her family, teaching swimming classes (!) and more. We did get to actually reconnect in person a couple of times, at various happy occasions and at the JBloggers picnic that she organized in Jerusalem, just a little over a year ago. Here's the photo that I have from then - you can see her beaming (as she always has) in the middle:

To give you a small understanding of what she was like, here's part of one of her blog posts from 2007:

~~~

Okay, so here is the deal: I don't want people to look at me with sad, "droopy" eyes.

I don't want people to think of me and feel sad.

I don't want people to see me and feel sorry.

I don't want to be the cause of worry and concern.

I know that when you first hear the news, it's a bit of a shock. So it's okay to be sad in the beginning (I was too). But don't stay there!

You can ask me anything.

I'm totally open.

I don't mind talking about the cancer or what's going on.

Chemo certainly affects the day-to-day of my life, so there's no ignoring it.

But I really don't intend to hang out in some dark, depressing emotional pit.

So here's what I want:

When you think of me, be happy.

When you see me, smile.

Read more: http://coffeeandchemo.blogspot.com/2007/08/no-droopy-eyes-please.html#ixzz14BB0gdA7

~~~

Anyway, it didn't work - we were sad on Friday, and I know I've never cried as much at anyone's funeral as much as I did at hers, on Saturday night. Then Sunday morning came around, and I found this sun rising on the way to work - and somehow couldn't help but think that RivkA had gone from lighting up our world to lighting up the heavens:

And I started to realize that I was doing just the opposite of what she would have done - we're meant to be happy, and take advantage of every good thing that life gives us! If we can all start acting the way she did, the world will quickly become a far better place. So I'm going to try, and I hope you all will too!

In that spirit, here's a fast, funny sign that we found in Sharon, MA just a few weeks ago. I know, those of you from Massachusetts may not find this funny. But some of the rest of us do!

(By the way, as a humorous aside to our Boston trip: my Israeli coworkers are shocked that I [or anyone] can pronounce "Massachusetts." They claim that saying it aloud must be part of the U.S. naturalization test.)

May RivkA's family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem! Shiva information can be found on her blog, Coffee and Chemo.

Please daven (or send happy thoughts) for the memory of RivkA bat Yishaya.

A new trend!

I'm entirely honored! This is the second week in which I'm privileged to post something that was sent to me by more than one friend. Thanks, guys, for thinking of me! 

First, my friend Jeff found the photo here, on the Hyper-Semitic blog. Thanks, Jeff, not only for the photo, but for introducing me to that blog!

And then, before I had a chance to post it, my friend Dena found the same exact sign in person, in the actual, live Central Park! Talk about a wacky coincidence. Get ready, everyone, here you go:

This is funny on many, many levels. As you can see, this helpful poster is warning us to be careful and stay away from stray animals that may carry rabies. It then goes to the trouble of translating the subject into many, many different languages. We the Jews are evidently worthy of two - both Hebrew and Yiddish! First, the fact that the city of New York is actively printing in Yiddish is a bit shocking to me, but hey - I've never lived in New York. Maybe that's not unusual. But here's the kicker - just like last week's post, the words here are both backward! Yep, left to right, instead of right to left. 

Okay, we're up to two levels: one, printing in Yiddish, and two, doing it backward. What's three, I hear you cry? Well, according to the backward Yiddish, the word for rabies is Vassershrek. And according to Hyper-Semitic: 

vasser-shrek= literally “water terror”. Probably related to foaming of the mouth.

Um, did you all know that Shrek means terror in Yiddish? Am I the only one left here with my jaw dropped open? 

Thanks so much, everyone! And have a great week!

And now, some stuff for the Hebrew speakers

This is going to be kind of a combination post. I'll start with this funny page from a book we considered buying while in the States. It's called Earth, by Jon Stewart. It was a bit pricey, so we left it on the shelf, but I noticed this page about Jews while flipping through. I thought this part was funny:

And then Dave noticed that in the text next to it, the Hebrew didn't seem to make any sense. Can you see why? (Tee-hee!)

So first of all, yes, the Hebrew doesn't have anything to do with the English. But second - look! It's all backwards! You know, just like what happens to us now and again when typing English and Hebrew together - except that we know how to fix it. So this passage is the beginning of Genesis, but with all the letters left to right, instead of right to left. Ha! Hmm, maybe it's not so funny - most people reading his book won't care. But I enjoyed it quite a bit, and now I'm giving you the opportunity to do the same.

And on that Hebrew blunders note, here's the second half of my post. This is a photo that has been going around the internet today - it was forwarded to me by no less than three of my friends (thanks Jay, Merav via Varda, and Inon!) and has featured prominently on at least one blog. And now, here at last, I present you:

Now, I'm not entirely sure if you'll all get this. While the Israelis are falling off their chairs in laughter, I'm going to try to explain to my Anglo readers: you can clearly see that this is Head & Shoulders shampoo. And yet the Hebrew ridiculously says "Eden Shodurs." This isn't entirely impossible, since many Israelis do skip over the H's in the beginnings of words. I personally really like that the L in shoulders became silent, in stark contrast (as pointed out by Rafi G.) to words like Lincoln, which becomes Linkolen in Hebrew. 

And yet I wonder - could anyone really be so dumb as to have written this sign? I think the fact that the photo spread so quickly is also adding to my hunch that the photo is a hoax. And yet, it's so funny, I couldn't resist posting it, even if it is a hoax! Enjoy, my gentle readers!

Oh - I need to share some JBlogosphere news: RivkA (of Coffee and Chemo) has been hospitalized! As always, please daven (or send happy, healing thoughts) for RivkA bat Teirtzel. And if you'd like to sign up to say Tehilim, you can do that here. Refua Sheleima Umehira!

That's all for now - have a wonderful weekend!

Even in America

Well, you may not all know this, but even as I type, Dave and I are on a fun-filled vacation in the States! We've been in Boston since Thursday afternoon, and are headed out to Chicago tomorrow night, where we'll be through Sunday. If you're in either of those locations, we would love to see you!


Anyway, needless to say, I haven't been doing much blogging recently. Who has time? But I didn't want to leave you all waiting around... and I really couldn't resist after finding what I found! Just wait - here it comes:


We were out at lunch with friends in Boston. The place was lovely: good food, big portions, and not too expensive. As we were walking out, Dave grabbed a menu. "Maybe you'll find something for your blog," he suggested. I reminded him that we were in the US, and that people know how to write in English - but then again, it's always good to have an extra menu, so I stuck it in my bag. And there it rested until last night. When I took it out, I think I may have yelped out loud. Can you believe it? Right there on the cover:

Can you believe it? I'm really not sure that I can! I mean, I know that Mediterranean is a long word. Maybe they didn't want to use a smaller font or something, maybe they figured no one was likely to really read the whole word... but on the cover? Mediterrean? Come on. For shame!


On the other hand, this makes me feel much better about all those mistakes I find in Israel :)


I hope to be back on my regular posting schedule soon - in the meantime, take care, all of you!