Lesson 1 - bet aleph-bet - the House of the aleph-bet

OK. I'm wrong. What you saw before this is actually lesson zero. It is meant to get you started by showing you how a sample of letters themselves can be identified by the smallest of children as small, large, and three-pronged. That is the visual approach. If you want a kinesthetic approach, you can read about yoga and the aleph bet. If you want a tactile approach, use Deborah's spaghetti structures, or go the the beach and trace letters in the sand. (I need a photo of LJ Shores here!)

The traditional European approach has been to use taste. That's right. Take a three-year old and draw the letters in honey. Have the child lick up the honey. My five-year old just came home with a recipe for "Yummy Aleph Sticks" from Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School's Judaic teacher. They spent enough time testing it in class, that he requested I create a sample at home.

This here is lesson one. Two Hebrew teachers and Rabbi Munk's book laid down the method to me. This is not just an "A to Z/Zed" or "Alpha to Omega" enterprise; this is the inculcation of the character attributes of each letter as they were revealed to Adam Ha-rishon (the first man). We start with unity (aleph), we build upon each attribute until we teach perfection and truth (tav).
aleph א This letter carries a vowel and is considered silent, although word-initially, there is a glottal stop. In its script form, it resembles the Arabic alif ا , but it has an additional "c" shape standing at its right. Interestingly enough, mathematics has adopted the symbol to describe the cardinality of infinite sets.

bet ב

tav ת



aleph = 1 unity

Avraham/Abraham

Noach/Noah



bet = 2 duality

heaven and earth

male and female



tav

prefection and truth



Shin bet tav

Shabat



bet house

beth (soft "T")

The largest Conservative and Reform synagogues in San Diego start with "Bet." What are they named?



Also starts with bet

The daughter of Pharoah, who named and raised Moshe / Moses

The wife of Jacob, who was the mother of Dan and Naphtali



Starts with "tav":

She had a daughter with Yehudah / Judah

Wife of Eisav's son Eliphaz and mother of Amalek obscure

My first three letters / Shalosh oti?ot sheli

Lesson 0 or 1, depending how you count
The aleph-bet: http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

The smallest - yod י
"not one iota" -- like the Greek "not the tiniest bit"

The tallest - lamed ל
like the lam in Arabic ل , and the L in English

The one with three fingers - shin ׁש
also found in Cyrillic ш and Arabic ش
The dot is on the right, so that if you write, MOSHE, the O and the dot will co-exist: מ'שה

The mem+ ' is [mo] 'מ and the shin has the ' on the right ש', but we only write one dot. OK, so now you'll remember that shin gets the ' on the right?
This I recall from Mrs. Pesis in an almost-forgotten Talmud Torah class almost 40 years ago!
The three-finger association is from the "glyph lesson" formulated by SDSU's Dr. bar-Lev.

my/mine sheli shin-lamed-yod שליׁ
shel = of של
i = 1st person singular, either gender י.ׁ

Use IPA for the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) or read them like the Spanish vowels.

Find two cities in Jewish history that start with each letter:
Yavneh and Y-
Shushan and Sh-
Lydda and L-

Maps of Israel: zoomable , talking , detail in Hebrew

G-d's name hides behind Tu B'av טוּ בּ'אב

Tu B'av is the day when inter-tribal marriages were allowed and when people had ruach ha-kodesh to know the identity of their beshert/e.

In the Talmud (Ta'anit 4:8) at myjewishlearning.com we read that Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel said there never were in Israel greater days of joy than the 15th of Av and the Day of Atonement. Both of these days are part of the cycle of new beginnings.

Tu טוּ
Tet-vav, ie 9 + 6 = 15
to avoid 10 + 5 (yod + heh)
which would form part of G'd's name. בּ'אב b' (in) Av (the name of the month, which occurs in July or August.)

ruach (spirit or wind) ha (the article)
Hmm must be a smichut/construct/idaafa form--stick "the" before the first word and "of" between the two nouns. QDS (holy) same as Arabic.
I can't recall the customary translation into English--maybe "divine insight."

Would it were that easy now!

NYC singles celebrate in 5768, with a high-tech twist: http://bangitout.com/tubav2008/tubav.htm
New York Times Coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/nyregion/thecity/10orth.html