Victims of the1929 Hebron Massacre

Posted on September 29, 2026 by jewamongyou

Many years ago, when I lived in Jerusalem, I liked to rummage through any genizahs I could find. A “genizah” is a place where holy books could be respectfully disposed of when they became too worn for use, or when the owner simply didn’t want them anymore. The most famous genizah was the Cairo Genizah. None of the genizahs I rummaged through came close to the treasures found there!

However, I did find interesting items, including a partial copy of a memorial book published to honor the victims of the 1929 pogrom in Hebron, when the Arab residents decided to kill as many Jews as possible, in the most horrific ways. A few Arab residents risked their lives to save the lives of Jews from the raging mob. I wish I had their names as well.

It looks like all of the victims, featured in this book, were from Hebron Yeshiva. Here is a more complete list of victims, and their biographies in English.

Following are photos of the victims as they appear in the book, with their names. One photo, of Shmuel haLevi Rosenholtz, is missing because the photo page had been torn out. I’ve posted his biography page instead.

If there’s interest, I may also publish the text part of the book, which is substantial – but it is missing the first few pages.

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The Liberalism of Niall Ferguson

Posted on September 9, 2026 by jewamongyou

I’ve been reading Empire, How Britain Made the Modern World, by Niall Ferguson.

I already knew, when I started reading the book, that I’d disagree with some of his historical takes, and I’ve gotten about halfway through the book without being particularly inspired to write about it – but some things I simply cannot remain silent about.

He tells us, at length, about the mutinies in Jamaica by the ex-slave blacks against the ruling Whites. He points out that White people, living among the blacks in Jamaica, were racist against the blacks – to the point of staging a bloody crackdown upon those who participated in the Mutiny, and even some who probably had no part in it. Meanwhile, Ferguson notes that the British ruling elite, who lived FAR AWAY from the black ex-slaves, and ruled from afar, were much more liberal; they were not nearly as racist (to use his terminology).

Earlier in the book, we find a similar dichotomy between Whites who lived among the Aboriginals in Australia, and the more liberal ruling elites in England. Ferguson points out that, if not for the imposed restraint from England, many more Aboriginals would have been killed.

Similarly, in India, we find the same dynamic: Local Whites, who lived among the Indian natives, had a fairly dim view of them, deeming them unfit to judge White people in court. Their sensibilities were overruled when a royally appointed bureaucrat was sent from England and immediately allowed native Indians to judge Whites in courts of law. This caused much consternation among local Whites:

This ‘White Mutiny’ was intimately connected with memories of the original Indian Mutiny, just twenty-five years before. Then every white woman in Cawnpore had been killed – and, as we have seen, a legend soon sprang up of rape as well as murder, as if every Indian man only awaited the opportunity to ravish the nearest memsahib. In a strangely similar vein, a recurrent theme of the anti-Ilbert campaign was the threat posed by Indian magistrates to English women. In the words of an anonymous letter to the Englishman: ‘One’s wife may be walked off for an imaginary offence and … what would more please our fellow subjects – than to bully and disgrace a wretched European woman? … The higher her husband’s station and the greater respectability, the greater the delight of her torturer.’ Writing in the same vein to the Madras Mail, a correspondent demanded to know: ‘Are our wives to be torn from our homes on false pretenses [to] be tried by men who do not respect women, and do not understand us, and in many cases hate us? … Fancy, I ask you Britishers, her being taken before a half-clad native, to be tried and perhaps convicted …’ Such language laid bare one of the odder complexes of the Victorian Empire: its sexual insecurity. It is no coincidence that the plots of the Raj’s best-known novels – Forster’s A Passage to India and Scott’s The Jewel in the Crown – begin with an alleged sexual assault by an Indian man against an English woman, followed by a trial presided over by an Indian judge. Such cases did in fact occur. As the anti-Ilbert campaign reached its climax, an Englishwoman named Hume accused her sweeper of raping her and, though the allegation turned out later to be false (they had in fact been lovers), in the febrile atmosphere of the time it seemed somehow to prove the point.

The question is why the threat of Indian judges trying Englishwomen was so often linked to the danger of sexual contact between Indian men and British women. After all, there was no shortage of such contact in the other direction, between British men and Indian women; until 1888 there had even been legalized brothels for British soldiers. Yet somehow the Ilbert Bill seemed to threaten to break down the walls not just of the cantonment but of the bungalow bedroom too. Ninety thousand white people who claimed to rule 350 million brown ones saw equality before the law as the high road to inter-racial rape.** One possible source of sexual anxiety was the awareness that the supposedly clear line between ‘White and Black’ …

Ferguson, had he been an honest man, should have asked himself two very germane questions:

  1. Since we repeatedly find local Whites, who live in close proximity with these native nonwhite populations, having a different opinion about the natives than those who live far away, shouldn’t we be asking if the locals know more about it than distant elites? Isn’t it possible that there’s a grain of truth to their “racism?”
  2. Ferguson was familiar with the Indian customs of female infanticide and the burning of widows; he wrote about them earlier in the book. Did he really believe, especially in light of such practices, that Indians show the same respect toward women as English Victorian gentlemen? How could it not occur to him that there might be disparities in this regard, and that this is why local Whites viewed the possibility of such courtships with disgust? Compare Ferguson’s egalitarian view of Indians with current travel advisories on India for women, the rape epidemic there, the Indian corporate nepotism we read about daily and the fact that female infanticide continues to this day.

Unless his books were written by ghost-writers, we can assume that Ferguson is an intelligent man. My conclusion is that, though intelligent, he either suffers from the mental illness called “Leftism/Wokism” or he’s a grifter, intentionally avoiding the tough questions so that he can sell more books and increase his clout in academia.

Is there a better answer? Perhaps; I still have about half the book to read. Wouldn’t it be interesting if he responded to this post? Stranger things have happened.

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Life in the Third World

Posted on September 5, 2026 by jewamongyou

I visited a restaurant of good repute for dinner. Sitting at the next table was an old black American gentleman. He asked me where I was from. “Oregon,” I answered. He thought for a moment and asked, “Is that somewhere in the Midwest?” It was a struggle for me to not show my shock that an American would not know where Oregon is, and it’s not like he was born yesterday, and he did spend the bulk of his life in the US. He was from New Jersey – and yes, I knew where that is. He asked me what I think of a particular professional athlete. I told him that if the athlete doesn’t care who I am, then I don’t care who he is.

The next day, for various reasons, I visited a supermarket that I don’t normally frequent. This is a major supermarket. In fact, it’s THE major supermarket in this part of town. It’s fairly large and lots of people shop there.

Every single loaf of “wholewheat bread” turned out (based on the ingredients) to not actually be wholewheat. I figured I’d bake my own. With a bit of effort, I found some wholewheat flour. Next, I needed yeast. I looked around for it and finally gave up. I asked an employee. Turns out they were out of yeast. “How can a major supermarket be out of yeast?” I thought. Then again, very few people bake for themselves around here.

At my regular supermarket, one can sign up for a loyalty card at any register, so I figured it must be the same here. Not so. The cashier told me I must visit customer service for this. The employee at customer service was so distracted that I was about to ask her if I needed to make an appointment to speak with her. Eventually, I was able to ask her for the loyalty card; I’d brought my I.D. for this purpose. “We’re out of plastic,” she said. No loyalty card today!

On the way home, I stopped at another shop, a combination grocery store and hardware store with furniture as well. It’s actually a good place to shop for certain items. I asked an employee for yeast (using the correct Spanish word). He had no idea what I was talking about. When we returned to the register empty-handed, the cashier came to the rescue. She knew what it was and where it was. The man grabbed me a container of yeast – with an expiration date of last year. Luckily, I found a fresher container, and I explained to him that this matters for yeast.

The ignorance here, both among the natives and the expats, never ceases to amaze me.

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At What Point Does the “Jewish People” Become No More Than a Religion?

Posted on August 27, 2026 by jewamongyou

I just ran my raw DNA results through the latest GED match tool. Here are the results:

According to this, my DNA is about 44% from the Levant (ancient Hebrew/Jewish?), 35% Southern European (Mediterranean) and about 18% Northeast European (native DNA from where my family recently lived before migrating to the US). Hence, my results are fairly typical for an Ashkenazi Jew.

How does this compare with other long-stateless ethnicities and indigenous groups? Most such groups have 80%-90% native ancestry. North American Native Americans tend to have less – and their percentages are often comparable to the “native” ancestry of European Jews. They are still considered “Native American.” Some tribes have blood quantum requirements. From Grok:

1/2 (50%) or higher

  • Northern Ute Tribe: 5/8
  • Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida: 1/2
  • Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians: 1/2
  • St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin: 1/2
  • White Mountain Apache Tribe: 1/2
  • Kialegee Tribal Town: 1/2
  • Yomba Shoshone Tribe: 1/2

1/4 (25%) (most common level)

  • Navajo Nation
  • Blackfeet Tribe
  • Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes
  • Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation
  • Oneida Nation (Wisconsin)
  • Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma
  • Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma
  • Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation
  • Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
  • United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians
  • Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes
  • Pascua Yaqui Tribe
  • Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation

1/8 (12.5%)

  • Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
  • Comanche Nation
  • Delaware Nation
  • Fort Sill Apache Tribe
  • Karuk Tribe
  • Muckleshoot Indian Tribe
  • Otoe-Missouria Tribe
  • Pawnee Nation
  • Ponca Nation
  • Sac and Fox Nation (Oklahoma; some bands)

1/16 (6.25%)

  • Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
  • Caddo Nation
  • Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma
  • Some Confederated tribes (e.g., Grand Ronde, Siletz in certain contexts)

I’ll point out the obvious: Once mixed-race people become “members” of a tribe, it’s a downward spiral for such requirements. If the requirement is too high, then the tribe becomes extinct. Once mixed people have a say in membership, obviously, they will vote for inclusion. At some point, a group of people is a “tribe” in name only – especially when they don’t speak the native language, practice the native religion in its original form, dress traditionally or organically observe tribal traditions – and when I say “organically,” I mean in a way that was actually passed down naturally from generation to generation.

I realize that I’m being arbitrary here, but my opinion is that if there’s a population of organically observant tribal members, then individuals (of that heritage) can learn from them and reclaim full membership in the tribe in that respect. Estranged tribal members can reclaim their heritage in this way as long as they have a minimum blood quantum (set by full-blooded members). This is what would make sense for me.

As for Jews, intermarriage is at very high levels. Judaism (in various forms) is fashionable enough that all sorts of people want to convert. Sometimes, becoming a convert can have real benefits, especially in the State of Israel. Hence, our average ancient Jewish DNA levels are certainly falling.

At what point does being a Jew become strictly a matter of religion, without any tribal/ethnic connotations? It’s now a cliche that converts are “just as Jewish” as somebody who was born Jewish – but this attitude is relatively new. Like the Native American tribe whose mixed members lobby for inclusion, so too did mixed Jews lobby for inclusion. Not explicitly but through a gradual and insidious metamorphosis of the Jewish people from a tribe to a religious club. In the Medieval work, The Kuzari, by Yehudah haLewi (12th century Spain) it’s explained, in a very matter-of-fact way, that converts to Judaism never attain the same status as ethnic Jews. HaLewi is not a recognized authority on Jewish law, and every rabbi you ask will tell you that Jewish law does not reflect his opinion.

This is not a matter of Jewish law; it’s a matter of attitudes. Clearly, in those days it was accepted that a convert can never attain the same status as an ethnic Jew. In practical terms, this only means that a member of the priestly caste (a Cohen) is not allowed to marry a convert. Other than that, it’s only a matter of attitude (as far as I know).

The concept of a Jewish tribe, independant of the religion, has lost favor in recent decades – corresponding with the rise in intermarriage. It’s unclear whether the existence of the State of Israel is helpful in the long run or not; intermarriage is a problem even there.

Right now, I’m at the lower end for native Jewish blood (at 44% or so). If I live long enough, I might end up at the higher end. When the average, for European Jews, sinks to 20% will we still be a people? What about 10%? For the State of Israel, this question holds some importance because it helps link us to the land of Israel. If our Jewishness were only a matter of religion, and we had next to no ancient Levantine ancestry, our claim to the land would be tenuous indeed. The average Ashkenazi is around 50% Levantine in ancestry. The average Muslim Palestinian appears to be around 80%. On the basis of DNA alone, it looks like Palestinians have a greater claim to the land. However, Palestinian culture (language and religion) is explicitly that of conquerors from abroad; it’s a colonial culture. Jews, on the other hand, have a core culture (adulterated, to be sure) that is indigenous to the land. This is not a simple matter.

For some of us (very few) this question is important for another reason: At stake is the very existence of our ancient tribe. We don’t want it to disappear – though in time it must. Nothing lasts forever.

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Concluding Thoughts on Hebrew Pronunciation

Posted on August 19, 2026 by jewamongyou

It always bothered me how ancient illustrious languages faded away and disappeared and nobody had the foresight to record their last moments of life. In a world where, for example, the Egyptian language was clearly dying and only a handful of elderly speakers remained, how could nobody have the presence of mind to interview these elders and gather whatever information was available? By some accounts, spoken Egyptian (in the form of Coptic) persisted into the 17th century in Upper (Southern) Egypt. Egyptian hieroglyphics were translated (by a European) in 1822. Hence, there was a gap of only about 200 years between the total extinction of a spoken language that had lasted for around five thousand years and its decipherment. Had Jean-François Champollion (the man who first deciphered hieroglyphics) lived 200 years earlier, how many insights might he have gotten had he been able to meet people who still spoke a form of the language? We’ll never know.

I found myself in a similar situation during my sojourn in Israel – except that I was fortunate enough to meet speakers of Mizrahi Hebrew face to face. With the exception of Yemenites, Mizrahi Jews did not pass these traditions down to their children or grandchildren. In the vast majority of cases, “Mizrahi” Jews today (in Israel) are oblivious to the Hebrew traditions of their recent ancestors, yet many of them still have the mentality that, since they’re “Mizrahi,” they’re experts on these traditions. Nothing could be further from the truth, and here I’ll relate three actual occurrences, that I personally experienced, that will illustrate this point:

  1. I was attending rabbinical school in Jerusalem. Several Yemenite students also attended this school, and I was friendly with them. The subject of Yemenite pronunciation came up, and I pointed out that there is a difference between the pronunciation of the letter Sadi (צ) and Semakh or Sin (ס,שׂ). A young Yemenite objected. “They have the exact same pronunciation!” he claimed. I knew he was wrong, because I had taken the time to ask the elders, to pay close attention and to emulate what I’d heard. He, on the other hand, believed that since he’s Yemenite himself, and since he grew up with this tradition, he’s the expert. We argued back and forth for a while. Not far from the yeshiva lived a Yemenite elder of renown. His name was Mori Yehyeh alSheikh. “Mori” is an honorary title among Yemenite Jews, similar to “rabbi.” Mori Yehyeh was famous for his folk remedies. He gave me a powder to take for my hepatitis. I don’t know if it helped, but it tasted awful. We visited Mori Yihyeh together. My Yemenite friend was embarrassed when I was vindicated. An American Ashkenazi knew his own tradition better than him – because I had asked the right questions, and he had not.
  2. I was on a bus, and I found myself sitting next to a friend of mine. I believe we had attended the above-mentioned yeshiva in the past. We were then both married. He was of Tunisian heritage and his wife was Yemenite. He told me that, while he admired Yemenite Jews, he found their Hebrew pronunciation confusing and odd. I pointed out to him that the Hebrew of his own grandparents was much closer to Yemenite Hebrew than to his own Hebrew. He didn’t know what to make of it. Obviously, he had grown up with his own family, including his elders. How could he have not even noticed this. He thought the concept was absurd. I confidently told him to actually ask his grandparents, or other Tunisian elders. He agreed to do so. The next time we met was a couple of years later. He told me that he had, indeed, spoken to his elders – and discovered that I was right. He didn’t change the way he spoke Hebrew, but he did make the effort to change his pronunciation for prayers. He had spent his entire youth in close proximity to Tunisian elders, but never noticed how they spoke or read Hebrew; it took an American Ashkenazi to get him to notice this.
  3. I was married to a woman whose parents and siblings were all born in Southern India (Cochin). They spoke Malayalam during family gatherings. At one such gathering, they were speaking some Hebrew so that I could be part of the conversation. I pointed out that my wife pronounces the letter Resh (ר) from the back of her pallet, near the throat, while the rest of the family pronounces it from near the teeth. They looked at me as if I’d landed from outer space. Their jaws dropped incredulously and, at first, they mocked me. But then they tested it by having each of them say something that included that letter. Suddenly, their attitudes changed. They had grown up together, spent their entire lives in close contact, spoke to each other regularly – and never noticed this. It took an American Ashkenazi to bring this to their attention. It didn’t matter to them one bit because it made no difference to their lives, but it did illustrate how people can be oblivious to the obvious for decades – and that one outsider with a bit of curiosity can easily learn more about a tradition than those who grow up with it and take it for granted.

The next time somebody claims to be an expert on an ethnic tradition by virtue of the fact that he is a member of that ethnicity, demand better credentials; being of a specific bloodline does not guarantee expertise in such matters.

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The Truth of True Speech Part 11

Posted on August 18, 2026 by jewamongyou

The Pronunciation of the Letters According to the Septuagint

Just now, the Lord granted me possession of a book that cites hundreds of proper nouns from Scripture in Hebrew and in their Greek transliteration according to the Greek Septuagint. From this, it is possible to obetain a clear picture of the pronunciation of some of the letters from the mouths of our ancestors from the time of the Second Temple. Even though for the other letters it’s difficult to decide what their pronunciation was and what the Greek writers would have heard. This is due to the fact that the Greek letters are different from Hebrew. Behold, what I was able to ascertain with certainty, regarding their pronunciation, according to the transliterations.

The letter Beth (ב) is always transliterated as the letter B, or a hard Beth (בּ). However, we cannot deduce from this that our forefathers didn’t distinguish between the hard and soft Beth (ב) because ancient Greek completely lacked an equivalent to the letter V. Therefore, they transliterated the soft Beth (ב) as the closest thing they had to it.

Translator’s note: Modern Arabic also lacks an equivalent to the soft Beth (ב), which is to say, the letter V. However, Arabs do not normally transliterate the soft Israeli Beth (ב) as an Arabic Ba (ب). Instead, they use the letter Fa (ف), which has an F sound. Ancient Greek did have an F sound. During the time of the Septuagint, the Greek letter Phi (Φ) had that sound – yet they never used it for the soft Beth (ב). My conclusion is that Hebrew speakers of the time pronounced the soft Beth (ב) as a soft B sound, as we find in Spanish and sometimes in Arabic. This also makes the most sense grammatically, since it’s an actual “soft B” that uses the same parts of the mouth as the hard Beth (בּ),

The hard form of the letter Gimal (גּ) was always transliterated as the Greek letter that corresponds to the Sephardic and Ashkenazic Gimal (גּ). From this we can conclude that its pronunciation was like a regular (hard) G, for had it been pronounced like the (Arabic) letter Jim (ج), the translators should have transliterated it as a D or a Z or an S, or as a combination of two letters together.

The soft Gimal (ג) is transliterated as a soft Kaf (כ) or an Aleph (א) or a Daleth (ד) or a hard Gimal (גּ). From this we see that its pronunciation was not always like a hard Gimal (גּ). It appears that since Greek had no letter equivalent to our soft Gimal (ג), they sometimes transliterated it as a soft Kaf (כ) and sometimes as a different letter based on whatever seemed closest to it at the time he heard it. It’s possible that at that time, the rules of hard and soft letters were different from what we have today. This might be why sometimes the soft Gimal (ג) was like the hard version even though today it’s considered soft.

The letter Waw (ו) is transliterated as a U or an O. From this it is clear that the translator heard it as a W and not as a V. For had he heard it as a V, he would have transliterated it as a B just as he transliterated the soft Beth (ב) or perhaps he would have transliterated it as an F, which sounds similar to it.

The letter Sadi (צ) is transliterated consistently as the Greek equivalent to the letter S. This is clear proof that its pronunciation was not טס (TS), for it it was, he would have transliterated it as two letters (TS) just as is now done in English. At the very least, he would have added a T.

The letter Qof (ק) is transliterated sometimes with the letter K and sometimes with the equivalent of the soft Kaf (כ). From this, we can deduce that the translator heard the Qof (ק) as different from the letter K (hard Kaf כּ) and this is why he sometimes wrote it as a Khi (χ) or soft Kaf (כ), which is somewhat similar to the Middle Eastern Qof (ק), and sometimes as a Kappa (K), which is also somewhat similar to the Middle Eastern Qof (ק), However, it appears that sometimes, when the pronunciation of the Qof (ק) was deep and clear, he would transliterate it as a soft Kaf (כ), which is similar to it. When its pronunciation was weak and soft, he would transliterate it as a hard Kaf (כּ), which is a K sound.

The Vowels

The vowels have seven forms and the early rabbis referred to them as “The Seven Kings.” The early sages divided their pronunciations into three forms, which are known as the elevated form, the opening form and the bowing (lowering) form. They explained it thusly: Within the elevated form are the Holem (וֺ), the Shureq (וּ) (and the fleeting Qomes אֳ) whose pronunciation is elevated and close one to the other and the letter Waw serves as a vehicle for them.

The opening form includes the Patah, the broad Qomes, and the Seghul. The letters Aleph (א) and He (ה) serve as vehicles for them. The bowing form includes the Hiraq and the Seri. The letter Yod (י) serves as a vehicle for them. The letter Yod (י) also serves as a vehicle for Seghul when it serves to indicate plural – such as Batekha (בתיך) and ‘Enekha (עיניך). These are the seven kings (or vowels and vocalizations) according to the ancients.

Translator’s note:

This is as far as I’m going with the translation. I’m having trouble understanding what he’s saying, so naturally I can’t adequately translate it. I will, however, publish at least one followup on this project, so stay tuned.

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How The Left Kills Blacks

Posted on August 15, 2026 by jewamongyou

I reached an impasse in my translation of my late friend’s book on the pronunciation of Hebrew. Even though I’ve been lazy about posting here, I’ve been active on X. Follow me there if you’re so inclined: https://x.com/jewamongyou

Here’s a recent tweet I posted about the apparent suicide of Jason Arday:

I didn’t know him personally, but it looks like he believed the leftist propaganda about him. When he caught a whiff of the truth, it was too much for him. The Left, as usual, has blood on its hands. We can’t blame low-IQ individuals for basking in unearned accolades, promotions etc., when they don’t know any better. How does the Left murder black people?

1. Defunding the police caused many blacks to do, either as a result of violent crime or in traffic accidents (as Steve Sailer wrote about extensively).

2. Poorly qualified black doctors “serve” their own communities and sometimes kill patients (the doctor who benefited in the famous Bakke Case is a good example of this). The Left increases the body count by encouraging blacks to seek out doctors who “look like them.”

3. Promoting abortion causes the murder of black babies more than others. This has already been discussed extensively.

4. Though the black suicide rate is naturally lower than that of Whites or Asians, placing low-IQ blacks in elite schools increases it; they either fail in school or get placed in jobs they can’t handle. The more conscientious blacks take their own lives, leaving the psychopaths behind.

5. Promoting the use of illicit drugs causes unnecessary deaths among all races, and this includes blacks.

6. The massive propaganda campaign to get black men to date and marry White women leads to financial ruin, broken households and dysfunctional children. This propaganda hurts both races because it encourages bad dating choices and bad matching.

I’m not saying that Arday was a good man. He might have been a useful simpleton for the Left. I don’t know. I do know that there are decent people who are black, and some of them try to make a difference:

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The Truth of True Speech Part 10

Posted on July 1, 2026 by jewamongyou

The Hard and Soft Taw (ת, תּ)

The letter Taw (ת, תּ) is among the letters בגדכפ”ת, which have both hard and soft versions. The hard version is just like a T and the soft version is like English TH (as in the word “Thumb”).

The hard version is well-known in all Jewish communities and there is no disagreement about it. One should, however, be careful to avoid stressing it when it comes directly before a Teth (ט) or Sadi (צ), for then it would sound just like a Teth (ט). For the only difference between the hard Taw (תּ) and the Teth (ט) is in the strength of the Teth (ט) in contrast to the weakness of the Taw (תּ).* Therefore, one must be careful specifically with the reading of the Taw (תּ) when it is adjacent to a Teth (ט) or a Sadi (צ), and sometimes adjacent to a Resh (ר). Most of the time, it turns into a Teth (ט) inadvertently. For example, in the words Yatus, Watitasu, Natita, Tite, Ra’ata, Wetera (יתוּץ, ותתצוּ, נטית, תטה, ראתה, ותרא) and similar examples. Generally, this Taw (תּ) ends up sounding exactly like a Teth (ט) due to the influence of the Teth (ט), Sadi (צ), or Resh (ר) that’s next to it.

The pronunciation of the soft Taw (ת) was forgotten by most Jewish communities. Among the Sephardim, there is no difference at all between the soft and hard Taw (ת, תּ). Among the Ashkenazim, on the other hand, there is a clear distinction. However, they forgot the correct distinction, and they turned the soft version literally into a Semakh (ס). The correct pronunciation is like the English TH, which is similar to the Semakh (ס) but with the tongue protruding a bit between the teeth. This was only maintained among the Jews of Iraq and Yemen.

It’s known that it’s very important to distinguish between the hard and soft Taw (ת, תּ), aside from the fact that it’s technically correct to do so, it also aids in avoiding pronouncing it the same as a Teth (ט). For example: Lo Thate, Natitha, Natas, Hatath (לא תטה, נטית, נתץ, חטאת) and so on. If we pronounce it as a hard Taw (תּ), then it will necessarily be transformed into a Teth (ט) because of its proximity to the Teth (ט) or Sadi (צ), However, if we pronounce it as a soft Taw (ת), then it does not transform into a Teth (ט) and it remains a soft Taw (ת). However, it is necessary to emphasize that one must know how to pronounce the soft Taw (ת) correctly, and not as if it were a Semakh (ס) as the Ashkenazim do. In that case, it would be better to pronounce it as a hard Taw (תּ). At least that way the meaning is not changed, for there is no difference in meaning between Titen and Thiten (תּתּן, תתּן) or between Torah and Thorah (תּוֺרה, תוֺרה). This is not the case if we pronounce the soft Taw (ת) as a Semakh (ס), for in that case, the meaning is altered. For example, Pethah (פתח opening) becomes Pesah (פסח Passover). Methim (מתים dead) becomes Misim (מסים taxes). Torah (תוֺרה Torah) becomes Surah (סוּרה turning away). Avoth (אבוֺת fathers) becomes Avus (אבוּס trough). Therefore, it’s preferable to pronounce the soft Taw (ת) as a hard Taw (תּ) rather than as a completely different letter. This is the case with all of the double letters (בגדכפ”ת), that if somebody has trouble pronouncing one of them so that it comes out as a different letter, he’s better off pronouncing it in its other form. for example, there are those who have trouble pronouncing the hard Peh (פּ) so that it comes out as a hard Beth (בּ), it’s preferable for them to pronounce it as a soft Peh (פ) rather than as a hard Beth (בּ). So it is with the other letters, that it’s better to replace the hard form with the soft form, or the other way around, than to replace it with an altogether different letter. After all, the meaning doesn’t change between the hard and soft forms of the double letters בגדכפ”ת. May the Lord help us overcome all difficulties, and let the verse be fulfilled with us, as it says, “the tongue of the defective of speech will quickly speak smoothly.” Amen.

* Linguists, and I, will disagree with the author here; the Teth (ט) is voiced while the Taw (תּ) is not voiced. It has little to do with “strength” or “weakness.” It is possible that this is what the author meant.

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The Truth of True Speech Part 9

Posted on June 28, 2026 by jewamongyou

The Letter Resh (ר)

The pronunciation of the letter Resh (ר) is known to be like the letter R, but the letter Resh (ר) itself varies from place to place just like the letter R. In each place, the Jews pronounce it however the R is pronounced in that place. There is not necessarily any disagreement between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in its pronunciation. Rather, the Ashkenazim disagree among themselves. It’s clear that it’s impossible to pronounce the Resh (ר) the way it’s pronounced in central Europe, as a soft Gimal (ג), because that would make it the same as another letter, and we don’t pronounce two letters the same way. Furthermore, the Resh (ר) has its origin in the teeth with the help of the tongue, not from the back of the pallet or the throat.

We can also bring proof, again, from the words of R. Dunash ben Tamim (10th century Tunisia) who listed the letters that Arabic has and we lack. He did not count the Ra (ر) among them. This implies that our Resh (ר) is the same as the Arabic Ra (ر). Also, the geonim wrote in Arabic with Hebrew letters, and they used our Resh (ר) to correspond to the Arabic Ra (ر). This implies that they have the same pronunciation. Furthermore, most Ashkenazim would pronounce the Resh (ר) not like the soft Gimal (ג), and to this day, the Jews of Russia, Romania, Hungary are the same.

Therefore, we find the author of Ohel Moshe (chief rabbi of Lviv in 1765) writing about those who pronounce the Resh (ר) as if it were a Heth (ח) (that is to say, like a soft Kaf כ, which is similar to a soft Gimal ג, which is the French and German Resh ר). He referred to them as “those of cut tongue”. This implies that in his time, not many Jews were pronouncing the Resh (ר) as similar to the Kaf (כ) or soft Gimal (ג). This is why he referred to them as a small minority that pervert the pronunciation of the Resh (ר), and that they are “those of cut tongue.” Had there been entire communities doing so, he would not have referred to them this way.

Note from the translator: This chapter was a bit disappointing for me. The author and I had a long-standing debate regarding the letter Resh. The issue was that the Book of Yesirah (of uncertain origin but probably composed between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD) lists the letter Resh among the double letters (בגדכפר”ת). We know about the other double letters; they are defined by the absence or presence of a Light Dagesh (Dagesh Qal), which makes them hard or soft. The Resh is different; in all of scripture, it only has a Degesh a handful of times. One of them is in The Song of Songs (5:2), which Yemenite Jews read in synagogue every Friday night. “שׁרּאשׁי נמלא־טל.” Yemenites emphasize that Resh, lengthening it so that it’s trilled much as the double R is trilled in Spanish. To the best of my knowledge, no other Jewish community has any tradition on how to pronounce this hard Resh differently than any other Resh. Also, the fact that the Resh is counted, in the Book of Yesirah among the letters of the teeth (זשׁסר”ץ). The author insisted that the Dagesh form of the Resh would have been from the back of the pallet, as central Europeans pronounce the R, and as a few Babylonians pronounce it. In his opinion, this double Resh was not based on whether or not there was a Dagesh; rather it would have been according to a long-lost set of rules. Based on what he wrote here, it looks like he eventually agreed with me, but he should have addressed the issue of the double Resh.

I was fortunate, while living in Israel, to get exposure to authentic Iraqi (Baghdadi) Hebrew – and I paid very close attention. This is good because it’s now virtually extinct; to the best of my knowledge, no young Israelis are well-versed in it, nobody asked the right questions, nobody took notes and nobody made an effort to pass it on to the next generation. Iraqi Jews did have two forms of the letter Resh: One pronounced as in Arabic/Spanish/Russian and the other was rhotic as in American English. It’s possible that this is the “double Resh” that the Book of Yesirah referred to.

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The Truth of True Speech Part 8

Posted on June 23, 2026 by jewamongyou

The Letter Qof (ק)

The letter Qof (ק) is pronounced, among the various Jewish communities, in five different ways. This is testimony to the fact that it’s very difficult to pronounce correctly. Therefore, each person pronounced it however was easiest for him and according to whatever vernacular was spoken in his area. Here are the five pronunciations: The Jews of Europe and America pronounce it exactly as if it were a hard Kaf (כּ). Most of the Jews of Yemen – as if it were our hard Gimal (גּ). Some of the Jews of Yemen*, along with the Jews of Persia and Georgia – as if it were a soft Gimal (ג). Some of the Jews of Morocco and Syria – as if it were an Aleph (א). Most of the Jews of Arab lands pronounce it like the Arabic Qaf (ق).

It just became known to me that the Jews of Malabar/Cochin in Southern India, pronounce the Qof (ק) exactly as if it were a soft Kaf (כ).** I discovered that in their language there is no equivalent to the Arabic Qaf (ق) or the soft Gimal (ג). It seems that this is the reason the Qof (ק) was not transformed into a soft Gimal (ג) among them, as happened with the Jews of Persia and Media, their neighbors (Sic) but it was transformed into a soft Kaf (כ), which is similar to the soft Gimal (ג). Therefore, there are SIX different ways of pronouncing the letter Qaf (ק). Had the Qof (ק) originally been like the Kaf (כ) or the Gimal (ג), then why would the other communities have changed the pronunciation of the Qof (ק) but they didn’t change the pronunciation of the letters Kaf (כ) and Gimal (ג)? Rather, it’s clear that the Qof (ק) is not similar to any of the above letters.

It’s clear, without any doubt, that only one of them pronounces it correctly while the others are mistaken. One need not be an expert linguist in order to know who is mistaken. We have a general rule that no two letters, in the Holy Tongue, are identical in pronunciation. If so, those who pronounce it as a soft Gimal (ג) , or as a soft or hard Kaf (כ), or as an Aleph (א) are clearly mistaken, for they are equating the letter Qof (ק) with another letter. It remains for us to clarify if the pronunciation of the Yemenites, which is the same as our hard Gimal (גּ), is correct, for they pronounce the hard Gimal (גּ) the same as the Arabic Jim (ج) so that their Qof (ק) is not the same as their hard Gimal (גּ). At first glance, their pronunciation is valid.

However, since we established above that the pronunciation of the hard Gimal (גּ) as Arabic Jim (ج) is not correct, if so, we conclude that the hard Gimal (גּ) must be like the letter (hard) G, and they pronounce the Qof (ק) like a (hard) G. It turns out that they pronounce the Qof (ק) as if it’s a hard Gimal (גּ). Therefore, we conclude that the Qof (ק) must be pronounced the same as the Arabic Qaf (ق), for it is not identical to any other letter in the Holy Tongue. This is the same as the pronunciation of most Jews of Arab lands and a respectable percentage of Yemenite Jews as well. We have already spent a lot of time on the evidence for this in my book The Language of Truth, and here I’ll cite them briefly.

In his commentary on the Book of Yesirah, R. Dunash ben Tamim (10th century Tunisia) wrote, Arabic has three letters that The Holy Tongue lacks, and they are Dhad (ض), Tha (ظ) (with diacritical marks) and Jim (ج). Hebrew also has three letters that Arabic lacks, and they are the soft Kaf (כ) and the hard Gimal (גּ) and Pe (פּ). If the pronunciation of the Qof (ק) were like the Sephardic hard Gimal (גּ) (G), then he would have written that Arabic has its Qaf (ق) that we don’t have, and we have our Qof (ק) that they don’t have, and it’s the same as the hard Gimal (גּ) (G). He would not have mentioned the Gimal (גּ) or the Jim (ج), for they are the same according to the Yemenites. Certainly, our Qof (ק) is the same as the Arabic Qaf (ق), and our hard Gimal (גּ) is not the same as the Arabic Jim (ج).

Similarly had the pronunciation of the Qof (ק) been the same as the hard or soft Kaf (כ), or the same as the Aleph (א) or the soft Gimal (ג), then he would have mentioned that we lack the Arabic Qaf (ق). Certainly the Qof (ק) isn’t like any of the above letters, but it is, without doubt, like that Arabic Qaf (ق).

Another proof of this is from the writing style of the Geonim and early rabbis in hundreds of books that they wrote in Hebrew using Arabic characters. They always wrote our Qof (ק) as the equivalent to the Arabic Qaf (ق), and they never used any other Hebrew letter to represent the Arabic Qaf (ق). This is very strong proof that all the hundreds of geonim and early rabbis, in all these generations, wrote this way. For all of them, it was obvious that our Qof (ק) is the equivalent to the Arabic Qaf (ق). If there were any difference between our Qof (ק) and the Arabic Qaf (ق), they would have at least added a diacritical mark to the Qof (ק) to indicate that it differs from the normal Arabic pronunciation – just as they did with every letter where there’s a doubt or deviation, even the smallest one, from the corresponding Arabic letter.

For example, this is what they did with the letter Gimal (ג) when used to represent the Arabic letter Jim (ج). It is always written with a dot to show that its pronunciation is not the same as Hebrew Gimal (ג), but like the Arabic letter Jim (ج). Similarly, with the Teth (ט) and Sadi (צ), which come with a dot when they represent the Arabic letters Tha (ظ) and Dhad (ض). When they represent the regular Arabic letters Ta (ط) and Sad (ص), they’re written without a dot. In that case, they’re the same as Arabic Ta (ط) and Sad (ص). Similarly, the letters Lam (ל), Mim (מ), Nun (נ), Semakh (ס) and ‘Ayin (ע) are always written without a dot, for they are always the same as their corresponding Arabic letters. Hence, any letter that has any sort of doubt about its pronunciation was written with a dot to show that its pronunciation deviates from the norm, or that its pronunciation is soft. However, a letter whose pronunciation is, without any doubt, equal to its Arabic equivalent was written without any diacritical marks. Therefore, the fact that the Qof (ק) never comes with any diacritical marks or dot is proof for the whole world that its pronunciation is the same as the Arabic letter Qaf (ق). This also is the tradition of most Jews who lived in Arab lands.***

*This is a mistake; none of the Yemenite Jewish communities pronounced it as a soft Gimal (ג). Some pronounced it like Arabic (Qaf (ق) and others pronounced it as a hard (non-Yemenite) Gimal (גּ).

**I’m the one who informed him of this. I’ll add that, except for the Yemenite dialect, all of the Middle Eastern/African dialects of Hebrew are close to being extinct in Israel; little to no effort was made to teach them to younger generations, and the younger generations are, generally speaking, completely ignorant of them. The Yemenite dialect, though great efforts were made to pass it on, is also compromised, with the younger generations having only partial knowledge of it.

***I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that even classical Arabic had some variation in the pronunciation of this letter. The standard, most common, pronunciation is described as a “voiceless uvular plosive [q]” and this would probably also apply to Hebrew. However, there were probably regional variations among all Semitic populations, including the Jews.

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