A little Esther

I haven't been keeping up with my chapter-a-day of Genesis.  I sprained my ankle on Monday and being told by the doc to keep my ankle above the level of my heart as much as possible, I have spent a good part of this week slouched down on my couch with my foot propped up on the back of the couch.  Hard position to read from.  Or to knit from.  Or really to do anything but watch TV and get a sore neck from.

I have watched countless episodes of Love It or List It and Property Brothers.  I watched 3 adaptations of Pride and Prejudice:  Bride and Prejudice (the Bollywood version), Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth) and Pride & Prejudice (with Kiera Knightly).  I couldn't bear to complete the set with the 1985 BBC version. Compared with the more recent film adaptations it is rather like watching a reading of the book.  Too much talking, not enough doing. Don't even think of suggesting the Lawrence Olivier one.  Never.

I am now watching episodes of Inspector Lewis so that I can try to figure out his seminarian-manqué sergeant, James Hathaway (played brilliantly by Lawrence Fox).

The ankle is much improved and I can manage the car if I wear very tightly laced boots.  Yes, it was my driving foot.  But now we have had 30 or so centimetres of dry powder dumped on us and it makes for very unsteady walking.  So I jammed out on Hebrew Club and stayed home.  Again.

Which brings me to Esther.  Hebrew Club is reading the book of Esther so instead of doing my chapter of Genesis today I thought I would catch up on the doings of Mordecai and Esther in the court of King Ahashverosh.

I.  Love.  This.  Book.

Such a great read!  And the Late Hebrew is easier than I thought it would be and has some interesting quirks.  I like the simple repetitions of nouns to convey ideas like יוֺם וָיוֺם (yom vayom), "day and day" = "each day" or נַעֲרָה וְנָעֲרָה (na'arah vena'arah), "girl and girl" = "each girl."  There are lots of Persian loan words in Esther, reasonably enough, since it is about a Jewish young woman who is living the harem of King Ahashverosh (Ahasuerus) of Persia.

I found a terrific article all about the language in Esther - one of the ideas I picked up there was that Persian loan words might be used for snobbery -- like using French words in English conversation.  You know what I mean, chèrie, n'est ce pas?  The savoir-faire of the Hebrew authors of Esther is very evident.  Here's a link to Holmstedt and Screnock's paper: Whither Esther? A Linguistic Profile of the Book of Esther.

Au revoir!