Monsters class: always entertaining

[adiva_calandia]

Doc: The great chain of being is actually a pyramid. At the top is God. Haaallelujah~ And below him are the angels. Haaaallelujah!~

Catholic: Aaaah you can't say that!

Doc: Why not?

Catholic: It's Lent!

Doc: I'm Jewish.

[Discussion about saying "Hallelujah" during Lent ensues.]

Catholic: I won't say the Y word for you!

Doc: . . . I don't actually care that much . . .

---

Doc: Where my lighting designers at? *turns off most of the lights* Would you guys say shadow is winning right now?

LD: . . . Well, I'd say this is a more dramatic look than you had.

Comments

[raininglight7.livejournal.com]

er, which Y word would that be?

[adiva_calandia]

YHWH, I'm assuming, since we were just talking about the name of God in that class on Tuesday.

But I prefer to think that she meant, like, "yenta" or "yahoo" or something. >.>

[raininglight7.livejournal.com]

ahh okay. I was like, "yiddish? yarmulke? *does not understand*"

[eatenbyfangirls.livejournal.com]

Damnit, I hate being sick. I have to miss the most entertaining classes. :(

[adiva_calandia]

You were much missed. We talked several times about how you'd been burned as a witch!

[mercuriazs.livejournal.com]

I'm loling about basically everything you've written in this post.

[newredshoes]

But is he a good singer? A bad singer doing a good Hallelujah is just murder.

And hee, I sometimes wonder if there should just be little cheat sheets or cards you can hand out. "'Yahweh': Not a thing Jews really say."

[mercuriazs.livejournal.com]

... What?


It's not?





Why have people bothered to mislead me about this?

[newredshoes]

I've never heard a Jew use it in earnest. If they're talking about God, they'll say Adonai (Lord) or HaShem (The Name) or, most of the time, God. Yahweh comes from, I'm guessing, an Anglicized reading of yud-hay-vav-hay: Wikipedia says "The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew יהוה, transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the actual pronunciation is disputed." The whole Actual Name of God is something else entirely.

[adiva_calandia]

This! And we were just talking about it on Tuesday. And we Catholics are all about calling God Yahweh, so I guess she's trying to be respectful by assuming that our beliefs are actually the same and she'll follow his arbitrary religious rule in the context of her religion if he'll follow her arbitrary religious rule . . . also in the context of her religion? . . .

Yeah.

But yeah, as far as I understand, the whole point of YHWH is that it's unpronounceable or at least has an unknown pronunciation, so that you're not using the sacred name of God in unsacred contexts. y/n?

[newredshoes]

Pretty much. Also, only the priests in Temple times could pronounce the name of God, and even then they only did it once a year. I could get into a whole bunch of things about text and story and Judaism, but it is my lunch hour and it is 62 whole degrees so I'm heading outside! I'll shorthand that conversation and link to this.

Yeah, from what I can see, it's a Christian thing used to talk about Jewish/Old Testament stuff. (I mean, I don't think we have anything against it. It's not offensive. It's just... not ours? Plus there's no "w" sound in Hebrew. So, yeah!)

[adiva_calandia]

\o/! Thanks!

omg enjoy the weather.

[mercuriazs.livejournal.com]

This is all super cool! Danke!

[batyatoon]

*cracks up* There should TOTALLY be those cards.

[newredshoes]

THEY WOULD BE SO USEFUL.

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

The LD comment cracked. me. up. I want to share it with the Boss.

[batyatoon]

... why can't you say Hallelujah during Lent?

[adiva_calandia]

Because Lent, like Advent, is a time of waiting and anticipation rather than a time of celebration. That's why we fast -- and just like we're fasting from good food like meat, we fast from good words like allelluia. Then when we get to Easter, we sing praise the Lord for the first time in forty days.

Or so this place tells me!

[silveraspen]

What adiva_calandia said. Basically, it's a statement of celebration, where Lent is a period of contemplation and sacrifice and waiting for the celebration to come.

[newredshoes]

Huh! Thing I did not know, but which makes sense -- thanks to you both!