Yesh Li Blog: Denver Jewish Examiner

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Denver Jewish Examiner

A friend of ours (and son of our good friends) has begun blogging as the Denver Jewish Examiner at eXaminer.com.

He has some interesting and enlightening ideas. You can check them out at Matan's blog here. (The link is posted on my sidebar, as well, for future reference.)

Leave a comment to let him know you visited.

2 comments:

Mari said...: Hi! I'm stopping in from Bonnie's blog. I've been here before and enjoyed looking around and reading what you've been up too. The pictures of Colorado are beautiful!
I have to tell you again what a wonderful daughter you have, but I'm sure you knew that already!; 8:27 PM
Vickie Atencio said...: I only visited Matan's blog once, when you first told us about it. Will visit again and be sure to leave a comment. Thanks for sharing your wonderful blog. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Usually I can't sit still for this long on the Internet. I'll try to find time to spend on Facebook, too. I forget about our Midrash group on Facebook. Sorry! It's all kind of overwhelming when there are so many things I want to do with my spare time. But this was definitely time well spent. Thanks again.; 9:03 PM

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Why Yesh Li Blog?

Why do I have a blog? Quite simply, I have a blog to share my favorite things with others. The right side of the blog has a long list of links to some of the places on the Internet that I visit often. In addition to sharing those with others, I often come here myself to find a quick link to where I am going.

Bonnie, our eldest, led the way into blogging with her Simple Beauty Blog, and later with her extremely popular Beans Blog. I decided I would give blogging a try and thought "I have a blog" might be a clever name, but in English it sounded rather lame, so I did it in Hebrew, a language I love more and more the more I learn it.

What does Yesh Li Blog mean?

We would translate (i.e. interpret) yesh li blog to mean "I have a blog" in English, but the literal Hebrew means "There is for (or to) me a blog." You cannot literally say "I have" something or other in Hebrew. It is always "there is for me," or "there is for you," or "there is for us," etc. Hebrew, the language of the Bible, is showing us that we are really stewards of what has been provided for us and for our use. Rather than private ownership, perhaps a better term for what we "own" would be private stewardship.

Languages have been my passion since at least the fourth grade, when I studied Spanish from a library book called Fun with Spanish. In high school, I was the rara avis that became enamored of Latin. In later U.S. Navy tours of duty in Spain, Italy, and Japan, we did our best to learn the local languages. Along the way, I studied some Russian and picked up some Greek by studying etymologies and some Chinese by studying Japanese writing systems.

My first introduction to Hebrew was in the early 1980s, when I took a correspondence course, but it was not until the past decade that my primary focus has been on this wondrous language. It has been deeply rewarding, and especially in the past few years since we met Ori, an amazing Israeli woman, who has become not only my primary Hebrew mentor but also our good friend. Moreover, the small group of people who meet weekly to study Torah in Hebrew in Boulder have become dear to us and enriched our lives greatly. Further, reading Jewish commentaries on the Web of the weekly Torah portions has deepened my own faith and opened up new understandings of the scriptures we share and of Christian writings based on those scriptures.

The pursuit of words has been an essential part of my life for many years (since birth?). Many things have changed in my life, but I don't see that part of it changing any time soon (until death?). Lehitraot! Shalom, Chaverim!