A few years ago,President Clinton made two Hebrew words
very famous.
When he heard that Prime Minister Rabin of Israel had died after being shot by an assassin, the President said ”Shalom Chaver.”



The President and the late Prime Minister were very close friends,
and the President was saying “Farewell, dear friend.”
Many people know the word “Shalom” and that it means “Hi!”, “Bye,” and “Peace.”
Many Hebrew words have become part of day-to-day English speech.
A “Maven” is someone who really knows, and it comes from the Hebrew
‘Mavin’ which means to understand.
“Chutzpah”, which would translate to ‘nerve’ like in “you’ve got a lot of nerve,”
means exactly that: audacity, being too bold.
“Kosher” which in English means “It’s O.K.” or the real thing, genuine,
in Hebrew is ‘Kasher’ which means that food is ritually appropriate
for being eaten.

When they were chatting with one another and sending e-mails back and forth,
our four heroes also used Hebrew words. Here they are.
If you want to see what the word means just click on it.


Hebrew - What it means:



Beth Hatefutsoth


Chanukah

Kiddush

Bris

Mahzor

Menorah

Talmud

Ketubah

Talit

Megilah

Shabbos

Tel Aviv

Dod

Saba

Kibbutz

Here are some words we used which aren’t Hebrew or are only
part Hebrew,but you may want to check them out anyway:


Spice box

Seder dish

Jude

Passover

Want to know who “Ben-Yehudah” was?

His name was originally Eliezer Perlman and he changed it into Hebrew
becoming Eliezer Ben-Yehudah.
He was born in Russia in 1858 and believed that Jews should go to their
own homeland and speak their own language.
The language that most Jews in Russia and Poland and Hungary and
Rumania spoke daily was Yiddish, a mixture of German and Hebrew.
The language that many Jews in Greece, Turkey, Palestine and
North Africa spoke was Ladino, a mixture of Spanish and Hebrew.
They all used Hebrew in their prayers and many of the books they studied
were written in Hebrew. But Hebrew was like Latin: it wasn’t used on a
daily basis. Ben-Yehudah decided to move from Russia to the
Land of Israel (in 1879) and to speak only Hebrew at home to his
wife and children.
Ben-Yehudah also began to write a dictionary in which he created
many new Hebrew words. He died in 1923 and his dictionary was only
completed by others in 1957 (15 volumes!).
Hebrew is now the language spoken by the vast majority of Israelis.