Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Biblical Hebrew Part 1

good evening welcome today we're starting a new series of uh classes hebrew grammar biblical hebrew grammar now from the name of it we already know that we're not learning modern hebrew we're learning biblical hebrew and there is a difference there is a difference in grammar and there is a difference in vocabulary some words mean different things in modern hebrew and they mean different things in biblical hebrew and therefore it's a separate study even someone who knows modern hebrew it's still good for him to take the the uh biblical hebrew class not everything will be new but still there will be some things that are different and it will help him in in um learning torah on a more advanced level so the goal of this class is to understand the structure of biblical hebrew to understand the language that the torah is written in that prayer is written in and the mishna is written in as well as many torah books some torah books that are more recent they are written in the modern hebrew but most books that were written before the the state of israel they are written in the biblical hebrew uh there is also a slight difference between biblical hebrew and mishnayik hebrew the the hebrew that was used by rabbis to write the mishnah but after learning uh from this book and practicing you will have no problem understanding the the language of mishnah as well so again the goal is to understand the the grammar we will also learn vocabulary and we will practice and um we will understand how the hebrew language works with nouns and verbs and we will also learn present tense future tense and past tense of verbs and so when we um want to understand the words of our prayer this class will help us as well now the book that we will be using is this book the first hebrew primer um if you are seriously interested in in learning the hebrew language you should get this book and follow along um at the beginning if you don't have it we can email you a pdf of the first few chapters just write down your email or or text me later with your email now before we start the actual class i would like to give a short introduction to hebrew language um in general so we we have heard that hebrew language is the language that the torah was written in and we know that using the torah god created the whole world and therefore when we learn the hebrew language we have to keep in mind that this is the language that has a lot of power it's not a simple language uh the just people speak it's a language that even god himself spoke god himself used therefore it means that this is a language that within it there are secrets there are deeper meanings and uh we will see that that even the uh the the structure of hebrew language hints to it for example in the hebrew language we don't have vowels we only have consonants and uh on one hand it's difficult you you only see in the torah or in talmud you only see the consonants there are no vowels the the vowels with the dots are a later invention of course kabbalistically if the the vowels the dots also have a meaning but in the torah text in the tanakh there are no vowels why one of the answers is because we have two sets of instruction the the written and the oral the written torah is the tanakh the torah the prophets which are the holy writings and everything else that we know is oral torah only the written torah was allowed to be written down everything else was supposed to be transmitted from father to son from student to from rabbi to student orally and the the reason was in order for two basic reasons number one so that the information can be explained better because if you just learn from a book um without a human teacher you may misinterpret things and therefore hashem wanted that that we should not be learning torah alone as uh someone said i'm a self-made man i didn't go to yeshiva i taught myself we would look down on such such a person someone who did not have a rabbi to learn from someone who did not go to yeshiva we cannot trust because his learning is flawed he read he thinks he understands but no one knows if he understood or not and anything you learn from him might be false might be misunderstanding so hashem said i'm only going to give you small part to write down the rest you must transmit by listening to your rabbis who heard it from their rabbis who heard it from moshe rabbenu himself from who heard it from hashem and therefore moshe's understanding was perfect so that's one reason why hashem split the torah gave us the written torah to write down the rest the great majority is oral to be learned from a rebbe the second reason why hashem split the torah like that and we are not supposed to write down the oral tradition is so that it remains uniquely a jewish wisdom if everything was written down the non-jewish nations would borrow it from us change it and then claim that it's theirs and then claim that they are the real jews like it's it happened with the written torah because we had the written torah the non-jews had access to it and therefore they could claim that they understand it and that they are the the new jews and they can add to it but if we have oral tradition no one can steal it from us no one can access it unless we test the person first if he is worthy the written book anyone can purchase the oral torah can only be taught to a student that you know is uh worthy of course in the course of time when the jewish people were persecuted we had to write down the oral tradition also but the rabbis did it very wisely they did not write down everything they only wrote down brief notes like the mishnah is so brief that you can't understand it unless you have talmud you have gemara explaining each mishnah for every line of mishnah you can have pages and pages of talmud and even talmud is not so simple even talmud you need explanation you need rashi you need to suffer you need you need others who will explain to you what do the brief words of our rabbis mean now the same thing we see in the hebrew language the hebrew language is half written and half oral only the consonants are written the vowels are transmitted orally and that's how it was from generation to generation until recently people did not have printed kumashim they did not have the art scroll with all the niku dot and translation they used the sephir torah they used the original sephar torah that was in the synagogue but every family had to have their own if you want to learn and they would read the words brishid barai lokim from the sever torah without vowels how did they know how to read they had to learn it from their rebbe from their father so even the text of torah even though torah is written but in order to understand it you need oral tradition how to read it and it has two parts the vowels and the cantillation marks which we call the the trop or the ta'amim the musical notes which serve as punctuation because the hebrew language the biblical hebrew does not have vowels and does not have punctuation in in reality it does have vowels and it does have punctuation but it is oral transmission and therefore in in in order to understand torah you need both the written and the oral torah so the hebrew language within it carries this structure and the whatever vowels we have are just the oral tradition that was written down at a later time so one additional reason why hebrew language is designed like that is because since the torah is the blueprint for the creation of the universe hebrew language is the language that was used to actually create matter space time and and energy it ha and history everything that ever happened and will happen is encoded in the torah therefore in just those three hundred thousand letters that the torah the homage is made up of you need to put in a lot of additional information how do you do it you do it by using only code words and then having the proper key you will unlock information that you need for that particular um area of creation so for example originally when the torah was created by god it was just the combination of letters the combination of of uh aleph bed gimmel dalit put in the order that we know it but without breaks in between with the words so you would now we read it as very but originally it was one long word from the first bit until the last lamid at the end of the torah and just like in the human dna every three bases of amino acids represent a uh a letter every three bases represent which amino acid you need and then depending on the sequence of amino acids you get a protein so too depending on the sequence of alif bed so depending on the sequence of letters in a word it will create a different word and therefore it will create a different reality so depending where you start you will have a different word for example if you start with a bet you're going you are going to have bed rash alef which means bara created if you continue re sheet you'll have a different word if instead of starting with a bet you start with a rash you will have the word rosh the head or if instead of the word instead of starting with bed or ish you start with alef shin you're gonna have the word esh means fire that means that i can start or god can start extracting the code from the torah at any point and it will create a different text you can divide the words differently instead of for example uh our sages say instead of reading the word bereshit you can read it which means he created six which they interpret as god created 000 years of history so depending how you divide the words where do you start it will produce a different text and different meaning so the hebrew language has to have within it ability to be flexible and that is why for example uh depending on which vowels you put for the same consonants you're going to have different word for example the the word that is spelled with head lamid bit if you read it it means milk if you read it it means fat and since the letters are the same just the vowels are vowels are different the the two words will be related pelev means fat halav means milk but milk contains a lot of fat also the word helef means like we say the cream of the crop it means the cream or the best the choices of something so depending on which vowels we apply we are going to have different word and therefore hashem can use the hebrew language by using the same letters and applying a different key to it where do you start how do you divide the words and what vowels you use and it will produce a different meaning on top of that we add an additional layer of meaning and that is the musical note which we said is punctuation depending where you put a period or comma you will get different meaning often sometimes it may be a question sometimes maybe a statement sometimes maybe a command depending on where you put punctuation and sometimes it can have a completely different meaning it can be a positive or negative depending where you put the the the pause so hebrew language was designed like this on purpose because it is a brief code which contains within itself a lot of information and depending what key we apply to it we will produce different a different result now according to kabbalah if we would learn the meaning of every hebrew letter and every hebrew vowel as well as combination of any two letters that are next to each other which letter is first which letter is second and which letter is third we will know what influence does each letter have on that word which letter has primary influence secondary or lower level of influence and what do combinations of letters produce we would know the meaning of every word without even knowing the hebrew vocabulary if we know what aleph stands for and what bet stands one what for a gimel stands for we would be able to just look at the word at its its letters and figure out what it is and not only the translation but also what is its function in the world how does it work what is it used for what is it good for what you have to be careful with what are its strengths and weaknesses that is the power of the hebrew language it contains within it not only the the translation for another language but also it contains within it all the um abilities of that object as we know that adam richon the first man he looked at every animal and from studying the nature of the animal he was able to give a name to that animal and that name was the exact same name that god used to create the animal which means the name for every animal contains within it the the code for structure of that animal okay now i'm going to read the the preface the introduction to this book we are on uh page seven in roman numerals the first hebrew primer this book is a simple straight forward guide to biblical hebrew it has 30 lessons and they provide enough information practice to enable you with the aid of a hebrew english dictionary to understand most biblical texts throughout this book we will have a lot of vocabulary but of course not everything and so once you understand the grammar you can use the dictionary hebrew dictionary is much harder to use than russian or english dictionary for example because hebrew language is based on roots and depending on the prefix and suffix the word will be different and if you look at the word and you don't know what is the prefix and what is the suffix then you don't know what to look for the word may start with a man and you don't know is that the beginning of the actual word or it's a prefix so you don't know what letter in the dictionary to to open to so after we learn this book you will know exactly how to use the hebrew hebrew english dictionary and you will be able to find the meaning of any hebrew word the goal of the primary is to teach students to read and understand biblical hebrew as quickly as possible therefore the lessons emphasize recognition and translation not memorization we present vocabulary based upon frequency in the hebrew bible which is very good for us the the more often the word appears the earlier it will be uh introduced in the book and have carefully controlled the number of words introduced that it shouldn't be overwhelming wherever possible the most common hebrew words are taught in early chapters by the end of the primer you will have learned most words that occur 200 or more times in the bible again this book was written for both jewish and non-jewish audience so they use english terms even though all authors of this book are jewish simon reznikov and motskin but it was written for general public and christians use this book as well in fact um when i gave this class last time and was recorded on youtube christians used to call me asking me when i'm going to produce more lessons for for for further chapters or they try they asked me to tutor them so that's why we will read it the way it's written and it says bible so we'll read bible but you have to understand that it means tanaka okay this controlled vocabulary should make the transition to reading biblical text as easy as possible and even though we're speaking about the biblical text tanakh tornavim but it will help you tremendously in understanding your prayer as well because the prayer the language of prayer is um biblical hebrew several special features in the primer are worth noting we introduced the first in a series of tall tales in chapter eight these stories are familiar folk tales translated into biblical hebrew the stories reinforce the grammar and vocabulary taught in each lesson and provide the student with an early opportunity to read large passages of text the primer also presents an adapted version of the book of ruth as a series of guided readings every chapter will have a paragraph from the taken from the book of root with the words explained translated so that gives us practice in actually reading and translating a torah text these readings become more complex as the students skills develop spelling charts in the back of the book give conjugated forms of common hebrew words that allow students to read and write biblical hebrew at the end of the book there are charts for the hebrew verbs for the for the roots again the name of the book is the first hebrew primer to make learning easier we sometimes use our own terms for grammatical concepts the chart on page 368 lists the traditional english and hebrew names for terminology let me open page 368 right now yes grammatical terms and it's it's worth it to spend time to to learn it but some some of the of these will be very confusing and we will refer to this table in the future when we actually learn these these terms hebrew language has some terms that english doesn't and some terms are similar now we also have been careful to present those terms that are the most common in the hebrew bible as a result you will study and practice many more masculine forms than feminine ones because again in the bible in the torah since most of the characters are males mostly masculine verbs are used as some forms are so rare that we have left them out of exercises and spelling charts all together okay with this we finish the introduction and now we go to um page one the beginning of the alphabet and the first few chapters are for for uh students that either never learned how to read hebrew or those that learn but need additional practice and i would say that we should all practice and i'm sure we will learn something new so again the first three chapters cover the alphabet and the rules or for pronunciation that is very important because when we pray we need to pronounce words correctly and when we read publicly or in front of people not to embarrass ourselves and also so that others understand what we're saying we should say words correctly even those who already know how to read hebrew are encouraged to review chapter one and two chapter three is particularly important for all students because it provides basic information specific to biblical hebrew even if you learned the modern hebrew you should still learn with us and uh by the way um this is true whenever you learn anything you should never say oh i know it already or i can skip it because you're doing yourself at this favor because you might miss something that you did not learn the first time you might understand things differently and review is always good so even if you know hebrew and maybe you even hebrew speaker but it's still a good idea to to do everything from beginning till the end with us okay now the difference between english and hebrew in the english alphabet we read and write from left to right in the hebrew alphabet we read and write from right to left and by the way um we can just try to think of a reason why we know that the right represents heiser and left represents strict justice so in the uh mod in a in the in hebrew we give preference to the right side always we want to be kind ourselves and we also want to draw kindness from heaven upon us and not strict justice shalom now in the english alphabet there are 26 letters but they also include vowels so if we take out the vowels you will have less letters in hebrew alphabet there are 22 letters but that doesn't mean that hebrew has less letters because all of them are consonants so for example the letters in english like a e i o u are vowels and if you subtract them you will have only 20 21 letters in the hebrew alphabet in hebrew in english alphabet in hebrew there are 22 letters and all of them are consonants vowels are represented by dots and dashes added below next to or on top of consonants letters in the english alphabet may be capital or lowercase at the beginning of a sentence it's capital and if it's a name of a person or a city it's capital in hebrew there is only one form for a letter there is no capital no a lower case we only use block letters one type so that by the way is also another feature that allows you more flexibility in english once you have a large capital letter that's it that's the beginning of a sentence you cannot put the beginning of a sentence anywhere else in hebrew you can put the beginning of a sentence anywhere any word in the even in the middle of a of a word if you uh merge all the words like we said originally the the torah was written now english letters are not written differently when they appear at the end of a word in hebrew there are five letters that at the end of the word appear differently so here this unique feature is the opposite if you have a an ending letter that's it that means that it's an it's an end of a word that means you cannot uh you cannot have ending letter at the beginning of a word or in the middle of a word number five it is impossible to learn to read english without knowing the meaning of words because letters and letter combinations can be pronounced in many ways for example letter c can have a different sound in the words cat and circle in hebrew however consonants and vowels are nearly always pronounced the same therefore it is possible to learn to read hebrew without knowing the meaning of words number six english is pronounced differently in various countries such as england australia or the united states hebrew also has various pronunciations ashkenazi but this book uses sephardic or middle eastern pronunciation so it is good for sephardium and uh ashkenazim if they used to ashkenazi pronunciation they have to adjust it a little bit but for us it's perfect now we turn to page two of the book and here we have the table that gives us um the shape of a letter the way it appears in hebrew books and it's more or less the way it appears in sephiroth with certain letters are a little bit different and then uh so that's called book print then there are five letters that have final form and then the block script or print these are usually the way people write it if they want to use block letters and then there's a script so if you want uh to be able to write in hebrew you would use the script letters we're using again for those that came late the first hebrew primer and we're on page two of it and the the first column in the table tells you what sound the letter makes um aleph is silent it only carries the sound of a vowel that is attached to it bet has two forms either bed with a dot in the middle or vet without the dot in the middle so either a b as in boy or v as in vine gimel is has a get sound like a girl dalet has a d sound like a door hey has an h sound like house and here we have to be careful that in hebrew there are three sounds that are similar one is h sounding letter which is hay where we just breathe out hey another one we will see is head which is stronger guttural sound not hey but head and another one is that's like a russian is a more strong sound also guttural okay so hey like house vav also v like in vine and here there are some pronunciations that that say more like a sound like a w sound uh by buharians or by yemenite jews and by persians they say okay now zion as in zebra z sound we spoke about it unlike hey head is a little bit stronger as in sound as tall ye sound as in yes cough can be pronounced as a ke if it has a dot in the middle as in kitty or as a half as a stronger not hey not but as a and even though they write here the same word but we have to remember that in the proper pronunciation we have three letters as in look it can either be a stronger or a softer in russian it's going to it for those that speak russian it will be easier to understand we have a stronger and a softer an example is call or call different pronunciation different meaning meme as in moon sound as in now and noon mem and half have the final letter that we have to familiarize ourselves also sound as in sun is also silent just like aleph but it is more guttural iron will also carry the sound of the vowel that's attached to it but unlike aleph where it's pure vowel sound is more guttural so you have to also add from the in in from your throat you have to change the the sound a little and you have to practice to to be able to pronounce it correctly now we continue with pay pay also has two forms with a dot inside it's a sound is in park and without the that inside it's a fe sound f as in food sadi is a sound some pronounce it as se uh for example buharins and in the persians pronounce it as s nuts nuts so again you have to um find out what is your tradition and you can follow it both saying and are acceptable cough is k sound like kitty but we have a cuff and we have a cough cough is more gathering so in addition to saying k you also have to use your throat as in but depending who you are you will pronounce are differently you might pronounce it as russian or you might pronounce it as more ashkenazi european or the the yiddish accent and in israel they do a completely different like a guess sound so i prefer the russian okay so that's the one that we're going to use not the israeli gay sound and not ashkenazi yiddish r sound okay now shin has two forms with a dot on the right side it's sound like she with a dot on the left side it is sound like sun sin uh and the one way to to remember where the dot is we say when you say shema you use your right hand so when the dot is on the right side it is a sound so remember is with the right hand so on the right hand side the dot is a sound and the final letter is tough tav is a t sound like in tall okay now let's read the paragraph on the bottom while we stress reading and pronunciation one very helpful way of learning a language is to write it in order to read the lessons in this book it is necessary to learn how to read book print the regular script the regular font to write the exercises however you will need to learn the script letters so that's a different alphabet we recommend that you do all the written exercises as well and uh if you are interested in advancing yourself it's important to learn the script as well and bazat hashem when all of us go to israel they actually use this script in everyday writing so it is a good idea to learn the script to practice it and this way you will also have a way to write the exercises and and an additional way to practice okay now let's do page three and the reading practice on page four and will end today the first six letters and two vowels aleph the silent letter bet and vet is being boy and vian's vine gimmel ge is in the girl de as number one aleph is a silent letter you can pronounce the vowel after the aleph but not the aleph itself that or vet are the same letter although b is pronounced as a b and it is in boy and ver without the dot inside the dot by the way is called the dagesh it is pronounced as ve as in vine without the dot or they call it to remember ball inside makes a b sound ball if you have a ball inside the letter it is a bad ball sound three the letters vet and vav are pronounced the same way as in vine even though as we said that some traditions do pronounce vav differently than vet they they assign it a more w sound and v and are very similar in its use of lips and in the sound itself um now number four when he comes at the end of a word and is not followed by a vowel it is silent so hey at the end of the word is not pronounced as hey but it's silent you just pronounce the vowel before hey and that's it now five hebrew letters sometimes have dots in the middle but there are only a few cases in which the dot changes the letters pronunciation so bet and vet are one example some words will have a dot in them but the pronunciation is not changed at more advanced stages you learn that a dot inside the letter can either change its pronunciation a more to a stronger pronunciation like or if it doesn't change pronunciation it means that the letter is doubled and instead of writing two letters one after another we put a dot inside for example mem if you see a dot inside a mem it doesn't change the the the pronunciation it's still a mem but it's as if two mems are there it changes the meaning and if you're more advanced you will pronounce mem differently instead of just soft meh you will say a little bit longer [Music] just like an english one you have double men you don't say me but you do pronounce it slightly different by extending them sound okay now two hebrew vowels now we learned that our first two hebrew vowels vowels are shown by adding dots and and or dashes below or beside consonants two vowels are shown below both are added below consonants in this case and both are pronounced the same way whenever you see the x it just means any consonant and both are pronounced ah this is for beginners as you go more advanced you will learn that the the one that looks like a little t is really pronounced like a combination of a and or this is uh kept in the tradition of bucharin jews persian jews and yemeni jews who pronounce it as are not or not are but are and that is again for more advanced for now we can just pronounce it as a on top of that that letter which is called kamats looks like a t can sometimes be actually pronounced as or in more um modern hebrew siddurim it is uh designated as the same kamas the same t with a longer leg that or a larger commands the larger t to tell you that instead of pronouncing it as a or pronounce it as or but for now for beginning let us pronounce both of these vowels as ah in modern hebrew in israel they also pronounce most of the time this letter cometh the t as a okay when a vowel is written below a consonant consonant pronounce the consonant first and then the vowel when the vowel appears below an aleph for then since aleph is silent we pronounce the vowel only ah now the first example we always read hebrew from right to left so if you have a b sound with a vowel you get ba if you have aleph letter with a sound since alif is silent you get a ba now let's go to page four and we're going to do the exercise on top line one and i will read and whoever has the book follow along ah ah at the end even though there are two olives there is only one vowel since aleph is silent you only pronounce one vowel even though there are two letters line two a now here we have the first word bait and aleph with the commas underneath ba is a word congratulations your first word and the meaning is come to come now line three ha da not to be confused with haag when we say that's with a head that's a different word and that's why it's important to know the difference between a hey and a hat is what we have now is the holiday now line four va va va ha the last letter does not have any vowels we just pronounce the consonant as if it has the vowel called schwa are the two dots like a like a colon and it means that you pronounce just the pure sound without extending it whenever at the end of the word the there there is no vowel it's assumed that the vowel is schwa and you just pronounce the the um the sound of the the consonant just like in on the previous line the last word is on this line it is in hebrew means fish okay now line five da va ha is another hebrew word means a father of line 6 another hebrew word means back person's back is gov okay congratulations maz alto we have completed the first class we did not finish the first chapter but now that we are out of introduction we will move faster so next week we will continue with the next five letters and one vowel on page four thank you for um participating uh so there are 30 chapters and so we will we hope to have about 30 classes and again ideally a person should be committed and go through all of them you will have lifelong benefit from it both in your learning and in your prayer and by that when we all move to the land of israel we will also benefit by speaking on the street uh you're welcome all the best