Digital Commons Network^™

Expanding The Corpus Of Vocalized Hebrew Text: Compiling An Unvocalized Text Corpus And Building An Online Interface For Vocalization Annotation, Rachel Shanblatt Bloch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Written modern Hebrew presents a unique challenge for training computational models for language processing because modern Hebrew text often lacks vocalization. The lack of available vocalized Hebrew data can lead to ambiguity in training these models and generally hinders work on natural language processing problems. The goal of this project is to contribute to the collection of vocalized Hebrew text by collecting and preprocessing a large corpus of unvocalized Hebrew text and building an online annotation tool. The annotation tool allows people to upload unvocalized Hebrew text, to annotate by adding Hebrew vocalization, and to download comma-separated values files of …

Illuminations, Kristina Michelle Thoman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Abstract: Illumination is the multi-general story of a Jewish family, and their oral traditions. The story will trace the family from just before the biblical exodus, through the holocaust, and follow them to modern day America. The family will face antisemitism at each place in history along the way, losing a child to the pharaoh's cruel decree to slay the male children of the Hebrew slaves, narrowly escaping a death camp in the holocaust, and finally facing growing anti-Jewish hate in America. In the last act of the story, the family will be faced with the question, if you are …

Analysis And Performance Of Osvaldo Golijov’S Hebreische Milonga, Gerardo Sanchez Pastrana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov is one of the most important and well-recognized composers of the 21^st century. His works are unique because of the diverse mixing of styles due to the interculturalism present in his music. In the program notes of his Hebreische Milonga, Golijov mentions that this piece can connect his Argentinian and Jewish roots as well as the influence of Astor Piazzolla’s music. In addition, there is a connection between the tango and the Jewish people residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that is not addressed frequently when discussing the history of the tango. This research begins …

Verticality Metaphors In Classical Hebrew Revisited: Refining The Analysis Using Primary Metaphor Theory, Andrew Scott Hodge

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies a new theory to old data. It reanalyzes VERTICALITY metaphors for distress in Classical Hebrew using Primary Metaphor Theory. Previously, this pattern of metaphors in Hebrew was analyzed by King (2012) within the general framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This study focuses on the ways that Primary Metaphor Theory radically changes the organization of conceptual structure as dictated by Conceptual Metaphor Theory and as used by King in his analysis of Hebrew VERTICALITY metaphors. The reorganization of conceptual structure following Primary Metaphor Theory hinges on the assumption that conceptual structures with direct, independent experiential motivations also have …

Innovation From Above, Below, And Behind: The Linguistics Of The Hebrew Revival, Aviv J. Porath

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This thesis seeks to investigate the unique example of Modern Hebrew’s linguistic revival and determine the historical and linguistic qualities that made it successful. I intend to challenge the common narrative of Hebrew revival as 'miraculous' and isolated from Jewish history. I will demonstrate the long legacy of Hebrew creativity, preservation, and reinvention that formed the foundations the Zionist movement was able to build upon. I also seek to expand the narrative of the revival process itself to more accurately account for the modern result that is Israeli Hebrew. The ‘planned’ element of the revival process, i.e. the well-documented top-down …

Hebrew As A Gendered Language And An Oppressive Mechanism Against Women In The Israeli Society, Rotem Itzhaky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Wherever you look, whether reading a textbook, scrolling through wanted ads, looking at job requirements, or just watching the news on the television – the effects of the gendered nature of Hebrew are noticeable everywhere. For many years I have been fascinated by the fact that Hebrew is a gendered language in a way that promotes patriarchy by using the unmarked masculine form of words as a default. Some claim that the language as we know it today is neutral, and not discriminatory, while others, including women which interviews you can find in this paper, do not experience it as …

Selections From & The Process Of Creating "My Blue Scarf: The Story Of Ruth, A New Play", Abigail Jane Ayulo

Honors Projects

My Blue Scarf: The Story of Ruth, A New Play, provides an adaptation of the Hebrew Book of Ruth that is focused on minority and female voices and experiences. It employs Hebrew poetic verse forms to pay homage to the story’s origins. This style contributes to diversity of voices in English-speaking theatre outside of Western poetics. My Blue Scarf shares a well- known and multicultural story to contribute to the diversity of contemporary American theatre and promote conversation about cross-cultural relationships in a time of division and prejudice. This project consists of eight selected scenes from the larger play and …

'Choose A Language Like A Wedding Ring': Polysystems, Norms And Pseudotranslation In Lea Goldberg’S Poetry & Prose, Benjamin Rangell

Masters Theses

Lea Goldberg [1911-1970] is one of modern Hebrew literature’s most significant poet/translators. This thesis approaches her early poetry and prose from the perspective of three theories of translation. ‘Polysystems’, ‘norms’, and ‘pseudotranslation’ grew from the scholarly and translation-lineage in Hebrew literary studies that Goldberg herself contributed to. Utilizing these three methods of reading, this thesis argues that translation’s thematization in Goldberg’s creative work is evidence for the poet’s ideal for a cosmopolitan, multilingual, national literature in the new Jewish State. This receptive stance to previous and concurrent literary traditions was met with much skepticism and criticism from Goldberg’s colleagues, and …

Occupation And Displacement Of Palestinian Multilinguals: Language Emotional Perception, Language Practice, And Language Experiences In Palestine And In The Diaspora, Anastasia Khawaja

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the emotional perceptions, language practices, and language experiences of Palestinian multilinguals in Palestine, and the more under-studied population in the diaspora - focusing on Arabic, English, and Hebrew. A total of 47 participants filled out the adapted Bilingual Emotional Questionnaire (Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2001-2003) in order to compare and contrast positive and negative emotional perception of participant reported languages via a Likert scale, and overall language practices and experiences via open-ended questions. Several independent sample t-tests were run by location of participants in order to determine significant differences in emotional perception, and a thematic analysis was run …

Translating Pun And Play - Wordplay And Soundplay In Hosea, Eric Fudge

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Fudge, Eric, J. Translating Pun and Play: Wordplay and Soundplay in Hosea. Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2018. 312 pp.

Puns and plays of sound are distinguishing features of poetry and proclamation. Poetry uses these phonetic devices to structure passages, create euphony, or evoke emotional responses from audiences. Proclamation, particularly in a live setting, also uses sound to emphasize words or lines that encourage audiences to feel, respond, or memorize. Puns arrive in the form of wordplay, which uses similarity of sounds that create ambiguity. Soundplay also uses similarity of sounds but to establish euphony or aural tagging. These phonetic plays …

The Pragmatic Strategy Of Main-Clause Omission In Japanese: Its Contrast With Hebrew, And Its Learnability, Maayan Barkan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Typically, linguists study things that people actually say, but this dissertation focuses on what people do NOT say; specifically, it deals with main-clause omission. This paper presents an empirical study on main-clause omission constraints in Japanese after the concessive particle ga (‘although’/’but’), the first known controlled experiment of its kind in the literature. It investigates, from a pragmatic and discourse-analytic perspective, intuitive judgments regarding the allowance of main-clause omission in Japanese, in an attempt to reveal whether Japanese Native Speakers (JNS) use main-clause omission as a pragmatic strategy, as is suggested in the literature. If they do, then what triggers …

A Study Of The Hebrew Infinitive Absolute And Its Translation In The Lxx Of The Pentateuch, Taylor Bascue

Honors Theses

Translation and textual criticism are two closely related fields. When translating from the original language of the Biblical text there are places variant readings occur between manuscripts. In these places the textual variant may have an impact on how those passages are translated. The translator must interact with these textual variants in order to make a decision as to which reading seems original. One area in which these two fields overlap is in the study of the Septuagint (LXX). This ancient translation is useful for textual criticism in that it provides a text that pre-dates some of the earliest manuscripts …

Variations On The Theme Of Integration In The "Israeli Democracy", Mais Ali Hriesh

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Negative Capability, Gabriela Vainsencher

Theses and Dissertations

Negative Capability is video installation inspired by a series of recorded interviews with my mother, a Uruguayan psychoanalyst. Our talks revolved around dream interpretation, how meaning arises out of chaos, what to do when one doesn’t know what to do, and how to tell when something must end.

Hebrew And Computer-Mediated Communication: The Effects Of A Language Manipulation On Perception, Identity, And Preservation, Tamar Nir

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study aimed to explore the ways in which Hebrew is currently being manipulated online through a linguistic deviation called Fakatsa. In this study, participants were asked to rate random statements of frivolous or serious topics in either standard grammatical Hebrew or Fakatsa Hebrew conditions on specific judgment values. It was hypothesized that participants would rate the Fakatsa writer negatively on certain characteristics, such as intelligence, education, religiosity, and nationalism and positively on other characteristics, such as femininity and creativity. Twenty-four participants completed this experiment. Results showed that participants responded as expected for certain negative attributes typical of Fakatsa and …

The Sages And Philosophers: Reevaluating The Interaction Between Ancient Israel And Greece, Mike Tolliver

Theses

The previously assumed late development of the Jewish sacred writings led many to conclude that the Hellenistic world greatly influenced both the content and worldview of the Hebrew authors. Though the evidence for the historical reconstruction that required the Jewish texts to develop late has been called into question, scholars have yet to reconsider the implications this has for the antiquity of the ideas contained within the Jewish writings and their influence on surrounding cultures. Whereas it was once taken for granted that the Jews borrowed form and content from their Greek neighbors, it is now possible, even probable, that …

The Experience Of Emerging Adults In An Entry-Level College Hebrew Course, Sarit Moskowitz

Educational Studies Dissertations

Most colleges require students to take at least one foreign language course in order to graduate. Some students tend to put this requirement off to the end of their program due to language learning anxiety, and attrition rates in these courses are high. This study asks the following question: How do emerging adult students in an entry-level college Hebrew class describe their experience? Do factors such as awareness of peers and languagelearning anxiety affect their self-reported learning experience? The findings are important to the field of language learning because there are no studies available that specifically evaluate the experience of …

William Faulkner's Hebrew Bible: Empire And The Myths Of Origins, Scott T. Chancellor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I propose that William Faulkner's literary imagination is charged by a Jewish sensibility rooted in reverence for the Bible as a text that is as vital and relevant in his time as in any since its composition. The Hebrew Bible's narrative method of compiling, redacting, doubling, and retelling, and its attention to curses, genealogies, covenants, and nation-building, reverberate in Faulkner's time as resoundingly as in any preceding it. There are myriad links in Faulkner's work between the Hebrew Bible, Southern Christianity, and American colonialism that merit our attention within ongoing discussions of Faulkner, empire, and nation-building, the Bible and colonialism, …

I Will Sing Unto The Lord A Rhetorical-Narrative Analysis Of The Poem In Exodus 15:1-21, Robert Shreckhise

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

The Song by the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21) has been studied frequently in modem scholarship. A natural and expected question is why study it once again? Despite frequent treatments within the academy, some key aspects of its relationship to the surrounding narrative and its function within that narrative have been neglected. The study advanced here considers the narrative and poem in relationship to one another in their basic bipartite structure, their character portrayals, their plot resolution, and their rhetoric. The resulting analysis presents an understanding of the poem as a hinge between the two main plots of Exodus that is important …

A Conductor's Study Of George Rochberg's Three Psalm Settings, David Lawrence

LSU Major Papers

Contemporary choral music in general and George Rochberg’s in particular present challenges to the conductor well beyond the traditional repertoire including complex harmonies and rhythms, tone clusters, sprechstimme, and unconventional notation. In addition, the conductor must alter usual score preparation techniques and acquire a more detailed knowledge about differences in twentieth century music. He/she must learn the techniques of contemporary music through study in theory and analysis. The conductor can also take advantage of many available books and journals that offer insight into the study, rehearsal, and performance of this music. As the conductor acquires the necessary skill in twentieth …

"One To Hear Me" An Exegetical Analysis Of Job 31:1-7,35-37 Which Explores The Presence Of God In The Context Of Human Suffering, Christopher Bramich `

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

This study will provide the reader with an exegetical analysis of Job 31: 1-7 and 35-37which explores the presence of God in the context of human suffering. Passages found elsewhere in Job will be connected to chapter 31 to elucidate the book's storyline and major themes. Lastly, a discussion of Job's theological relevance will consider the book's significance in the wider framework of the Old and New Testaments.

"Blessed Are They Who Keep These Words" An Examination Of The Use Of Language And The Intentionality Of Solecisms In The Apocalypse, Timothy Rosenthal

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

This paper purposes to examine the role and impact of the solecisms found in the Apocalypse. Before one can isolate a discussion about solecisms one must first address the issue of the style of Revelation (and, to some extent, that of the NT in general) and the degree to which Semiticisms appear. Thus, though the paper wishes to focus upon solecisms, a rather large portion of the paper will necessarily first address the whole issue of the nature and style of the Greek in Revelation so that a clear understanding of solecisms might emerge.

O Come Our Wisdom From On High- An Introduction Into Wisdom Christology, Ralph Shorey

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

The purpose of this paper is not to tackle directly all the varying presuppositions held by Feminists in connection with Sophia Christology. Paul Wenz, in the Thanksgiving, 1994 issue of Concordia Student Journal has written an excellent article concerning this point.' Instead, this paper will deal with the following: (1) The general meaning of "wisdom" as it is commonly understood in Scripture, (2) an analytical study of Proverbs 8:22-35 in order to see how Scripture has appropriated the name of Wisdom to Christ, and (3) a brief survey of Early Church History up to the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. …

Vanity In Human Life-A Comparative Study Of The Role Of Hebel In Qoheleth And Wu In The Philosophical Thought Of Wang Bi, Samuel Hsiao-Yung Liu

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

The aim of this study is to increase the mutual understanding between the Old Testament and ancient Chinese thought. The methodology is both cross-cultural and exegetical. Without the effort of exegesis, an understanding of hebel would be colored by one's own assumptions and prejudices. The same thing is true of ancient Chinese philosophy. The concept of wu was first discussed not by Wang Bi but by Lao Zia (in about the fifth century B.C.E.), the founder of Daoism. A$ a re-interpreter of wu, Wang-Bi developed the original meaning of Lao Zi and increased a new spirit for Daoism, Confucianism and …

How Can The Ancient Greek Translations Of The Song Of The Suffering Servant, Michael Walther

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

The ancient Greek Translations of The Song of the Suffering Servant 1n Isaiah 52.13-53.12 provide and interesting example of the way 1n which people of the past have struggled with difficult texts. This particular study draws from the septuagint (LXX) as well as the later Greek versions produced by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus. Following a brief review of these four important Greek translations, I will examine the important variations and offer my conclusions regarding the meaning of the Song and the task of translation.

Ransomed/Redeemed - At What Price A Study Of The Λυτρον Group Of Words, Frederick Schmitt

Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers

A major problem in word studies is how much of the meanings and implications found in earlier word usage carries over into later usage, or in moving from one language to another. Today when we use the words "ransom" or "redeem" many of the aspects common to their usage 200 years ago will not be inferred or understood by today's average hearer. Nor is it likely that most of the nuances of the corresponding biblical Greek and Hebrew terms for "ransom" and "redeem" would be picked up by today's audience. But was there a significant change in understanding in these …

The 'Schizoid' Nature Of Modern Hebrew Linguistics: A Contact Language In Search Of A Genetic Past, Devon L. Strolovitch

Honors Papers

This conflict in views is the main issue of this paper. It involves an enduring tension between synchrony and diachrony which has characterized almost all analysis of the Modern Hebrew revival. This tension has made Modern Hebrew, especially the spoken variety of native Israeli Jews, one of the most fascinating objects of study for both linguists and non-linguists, who have explored Modern Hebrew to express both highly conventional and highly unorthodox opinions regarding its character. Some consider it the direct descendent of an ongoing linguistic legacy, transcending certain principles of linguistic behavior (e.g. Tur-Sinai 1960). Others vehemently assert its autonomy …

Hebrew Narrative: Theory For Proclamation, Alan Toenjes

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

While acknowledging (enthusiastically!) the close relationship between homiletics and exegesis, this paper will approach Hebrew narratives from the vantage point of the exegete, specifically, that of the Lutheran exegete who confesses Scripture as God's Word of both Law and Gospel. From this point of view, this thesis will posit a hermeneutical understanding of Hebrew narratives as Scripture that will be of value for the preacher.

A fundamental presupposition that this paper shares with the likes of Thompson, Gowan and others, is that it is important to preach on Old Testament texts. It is no secret that this assumption has not …

When God Becomes Your Enemy- The Theology Of The Complaint Psalms, Ingvar Floysvik

Doctor of Theology Dissertation

The experience of being forgotten, rejected or even attacked by God has been very real for people of all times. An untimely death in the family, prolonged sickness, unfair treatment in the community or in court, or on the larger scale, natural disasters, war and persecution, these and other catastrophes may make individuals or whole communities experience God as an enemy. Readers of the Bible recognize that income psalms the psalmists share these experiences. They complain to God that he has abandoned them or that he is angry with them. The present dissertation is an investigation into the theology of …

A Study Of The Old Testament Quote In Matthew 27:9, 10, Curtis Giese

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Upon examining the Old Testament quotations in the Gospel of Matthew, one observes that their wording occasionally differs from that of the Hebrew Masoretic Text,(MT) the Septuagint (LXX), or any other known text. Matthew27:9, 10 is an especially striking example of this occurrence. Such deviation is immediately surprising because Jews and Christians contemporary to Matthew held the words of the Hebrew Old Testament, duly represented by the present Masoretic Text, in high esteem.' In addition, the Septuagint held a position at that time as a respected translation of the Hebrew.2 One questions, therefore, why the deviations exist in the Gospel …