Uncategorized
Now translated into 49 Jewish languages: the Jewish spring ritual of counting the Omer
(JTA) — There are 49 days between the second night of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, but who’s counting?
Jews the world over, in fact, and in languages familiar and obscure.
The daily counting of the Omer is an old ritual being given new life this season by the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. On each day of the seven-week period, the research group will post a version of the counting in a different vernacular Jewish language, from Ladino and Yiddish to less familiar languages like Judeo-Georgian and Judeo-Persian.
The multilingual Omer counter is a way to draw attention to Jewish linguistic diversity, revive interest in fading languages and celebrate the far-flung nature of the Jewish Diaspora.
“Because of migration, nationalist language policies, and genocide, a large percentage of the languages in our Omer counter are currently endangered,” write Sarah Bunin Benor, founding director of the Jewish Language Project, and Eden Moyal, its curator. Benor is a vice provost at HUC-JIR, and Moyal is a linguistics and anthropology major at UCLA.
The Omer (or “sheaf” in Hebrew) was a harvest offering made at the Temple in Jerusalem in ancient times between the two holidays; the daily counting during home and synagogue prayers outlived the Temple as a symbol of the thematic links between Passover and Shavuot.
Although the counting is usually recited in Hebrew, the Jewish Language Project’s Omer counter translates the formula into the vernacular, often a Judaized version of the local language. To nail down how different communities might have referred to the counting, Benor and Moyal consulted historical documents, scholars and native speakers — a process of historical detective work when it came to extinct languages, such as Judeo-Provençal and Judeo-Catalan.
In Judeo-Italian, for example, the 20th day of the Omer will be welcomed with, “Oggi e er ventesimo giorno der Ngomer.”
The Jewish Language Project is dedicated to preserving languages whose fate is tied to the Jewish communities who spoke them. “For example, Judeo-Esfahani, Judeo-Kermani, and Lishan Didan are spoken primarily by elderly Jews who moved from Iran to Israel and the United States and [have] not passed their languages on to their children,” write Benor and Moyal. “Including these languages here helps to raise awareness about them while there’s still time to learn from native speakers.”
The counts will be posted daily on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and archived on the Jewish Language Project’s website.
—
The post Now translated into 49 Jewish languages: the Jewish spring ritual of counting the Omer appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
Uncategorized
In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
Uncategorized
Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.