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129-522: The Hobart Synagogue is a heritage-listed synagogue located in 59 Argyle Street , Hobart , Tasmania , Australia. The synagogue is the oldest synagogue building in Australia and is a rare example of the Egyptian Revival style of synagogue architecture. The Egyptian Revival building was constructed in 1845. The trapezoidal shape of the windows and the columns with lotus capitals are characteristic of

258-467: A third or fourth century inscription uses a similar term, εὑκτήριον euktērion . The oldest Samaritan synagogue discovered so far is from Delos in the Aegean Islands , with an inscription dated between 250 and 175 BCE, while most Samaritan synagogues excavated in the wider Land of Israel and ancient Samaria in particular, were built in the fourth to seventh centuries at the very end of

387-473: A trigraph that are standard elements of the Yiddish writing system . They appear here in normal alphabetic order but are commonly collated separately at the end of a listing of the basic single-character alphabet. The pronunciation in contemporary Hasidic communities reflects the regional dialects from which these communities originate, and therefore may differ from the standard presented below. The SYO

516-628: A choir to accompany the hazzan, and vestments for the synagogue rabbi to wear. In following decades, the central reader's table, the Bimah , was moved to the front of the Reform sanctuary—previously unheard-of in Orthodox synagogues. Gender separation was also removed. Synagogues often take on a broader role in modern Jewish communities and may include additional facilities such as a catering hall, kosher kitchen, religious school , library , day care center and

645-516: A component of any Yiddish orthographic tradition, is the combination of a khirik with a tsvey yudn ligature to represent the consonant–vowel sequence yud — khirik yud , as ײִ ( U+05F2 U+05B4 ) rather than the correct ייִ ( U+05D9 U+05D9 U+05B4 ). Fonts that support Hebrew script do not always correctly render the combining points that are specific to Yiddish (and in many cases have general difficulty with Hebrew marks). Some applications display extraneous blank space adjacent to

774-591: A component of the methodology applied to the romanization of words presented in the phonemic orthography. A transliteration system uses one script to represent another as closely as possible. It normally permits unambiguous conversion between the two scripts. Where the intent is to indicate phonetic variation, some form of transcription (frequently done through usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet ( IPA )) will be required. There are also many contexts in which phonetic distinctions are indicated by

903-575: A continually lit lamp or lantern, usually electric in contemporary synagogues, called the ner tamid ( נר תמיד ‎), the "Eternal Light", used as a way to honor the Divine Presence. A synagogue may be decorated with artwork, but in the Rabbinic and Orthodox tradition, three-dimensional sculptures and depictions of the human body are not allowed as these are considered akin to idolatry. Originally, synagogues were made devoid of much furniture,

1032-447: A convenient framework within which intervening developments may be considered. There was significant debate about many aspects of that sequence, including the need for any form of standardized orthography at all ( Fishman 1981 ). The outright replacement of Hebrew script with Roman script in the native representation of written Yiddish was briefly considered, among others by L. L. Zamenhof . This had no impact on mainstream orthography but

1161-561: A dozen Second Temple period synagogues in use by Jews and Samaritans have been identified by archaeologists in Israel and other countries of the Hellenistic world . Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai , who is often credited with reformulating Judaism for the post-Temple era, advocated for the establishment of individual houses of worship since

1290-460: A few variants that may be seen in readily available literature. The YIVO romanizations are taken from the same source, where they are presented as "sound equivalents". The romanizations indicated in Harkavy 1898 are included for comparison. The IPA transcriptions correspond to the examples provided by YIVO (with a few additional variants). The transcriptions in the following column were extrapolated from

1419-479: A government was in the Soviet Union in 1920, abolishing the separate etymological orthography for words of Semitic (i.e., Hebrew and Aramaic) origin. This was extended twelve years later with the elimination of the five separate final-form consonants (as indicated in the table below) which were, however, widely reintroduced in 1961. The changes are both illustrated in the way the name of the author Sholem Aleichem

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1548-507: A large extent because of the consistency with which its phonemic attributes could be represented by a standardized orthography similarly requiring only minimal elaboration of traditional practice. The important distinctions between Litvish, Poylish, and Ukrainish are therefore not indicated in either the SYO or Weinreich dictionary. These are, however, discussed in detail in the LCAAJ to which Uriel Weinreich

1677-686: A large number of synagogues across the Roman - Byzantine and Sasanian Empires . Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of synagogues in at least thirteen places across the diaspora, spanning from Dura-Europos in Syria to Elche in Hispania (modern-day Spain ). An especially sizable and monumental synagogue dating from this period is the Sardis Synagogue . Additionally, many inscriptions pertaining to synagogues and their officials have been discovered. In

1806-586: A letter with such a mark, and the mark may be displayed in that space rather than properly positioned with the base character. Writing text for presentation in a reading environment that has unknown font resources — as will almost invariably be the case with HTML documents — thus needs special care. Here again, this is not simply a matter of typographic preference. The disjunction of combining and base characters can easily lead to error when character sequences are copied from one application into another. The same alternative modes of entry that are illustrated above with

1935-454: A manner that appears natural to the reader. A choice therefore needs to be made about which of the several possible pronunciations of the Yiddish word is to be conveyed prior to its transliteration, with parallel attention to the phonemic attributes of the target language. The romanization of Yiddish has been a focus of scholarly attention in Europe since the early 16th century. A detailed review of

2064-436: A more conventional orthography than the one put forward by YIVO. Differences in the systems can be seen simply by comparing the titles of the two documents but they differ more fundamentally in their approaches to the prescription and description of orthographic detail. The former treats orthographic variation as a positive attribute of the Yiddish literature and describes essential elements of that variation. The latter presents

2193-451: A number of Yiddish books are currently available in romanized editions. These include Yiddish dictionaries, a context in which consistent and phonetically tenable transliteration is essential. There is no general agreement regarding transliteration of Hebrew into the Roman alphabet. The Hebrew component of a Yiddish text will normally reflect the transliterator's preference without being seen as

2322-593: A number of texts specifically about the need (pro and con) for a uniform orthography. A detailed chronology of the major events during this normative action, including rosters of conference participants, bibliographic references to the documents they produced, and summaries of their contents, is given in Yiddish in Schaechter 1999 . There is a less detailed (but extensive nonetheless) English language review of this process in Estraikh 1999 . The first action formally undertaken by

2451-627: A particular concern for Internet users as Yiddish is increasingly used in Internationalized Domain Names , and in Web and e-mail addresses. Some mobile clients only provide limited support for typing pointed text, restricting the range of available characters for such things as instant messaging and other forms of spontaneous digital text. Even people who are skilled in using laptop or desktop keyboards for that purpose (which also requires some erudition) are subject to this constraint. This fuels

2580-697: A place for communal prayer and reading and studying the Torah . Alexandrian Jews also made a Koine Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint . The earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of synagogues is stone dedication inscriptions from the third century BCE prove that proseukhái existed by that date. Philo and Josephus mention lavishly-adorned synagogues in Alexandria and in Antioch , respectively. More than

2709-419: A regular array). The pointed digraph pasekh tsvey yudn can also be typed in different ways. The one is simply to enter a precomposed pasekh tsvey yudn , which is both displayed and stored as a single character ײַ ( U+FB1F ). The second option is to enter the tsvey yudn ligature as a base character and then to enter a combining pasekh for display together with it. Although appearing to be

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2838-443: A single character ײַ , it is stored digitally as two separate characters ( U+05F2 U+05B7 ). These two forms can only be directly entered from a keyboard on which the ligature appears. As a result, a practice is developing where pasekh tsvey yudn are indicated by enclosing a pasekh between the elements of a two-character digraph. The pasekh aligns correctly only with the first yud (subject to conditions described in

2967-406: A single system. (The belief that this variation was an impediment to the recognition of Yiddish as a literary peer to the other major European languages was a primary driving force toward the development of orthographic norms.) A detailed generalized description of the pointing of Yiddish text is given in Harkavy 1898 and the topic is also treated briefly in the SYO (which otherwise simply declares

3096-673: A smaller chapel for daily services. Since many Orthodox and some non-Orthodox Jews prefer to collect a minyan (a quorum of ten) rather than pray alone, they commonly assemble at pre-arranged times in offices, living rooms, or other spaces when these are more convenient than formal synagogue buildings. A room or building that is used this way can become a dedicated small synagogue or prayer room. Among Ashkenazi Jews they are traditionally called shtiebel ( שטיבל , pl. shtiebelekh or shtiebels , Yiddish for "little house"), and are found in Orthodox communities worldwide. Another type of communal prayer group, favored by some contemporary Jews,

3225-586: A special chair placed on the wall facing Jerusalem and next to the Torah Shrine was reserved for the prominent members of the congregation and for important guests. Such a stone-carved and inscribed seat was discovered at archaeological excavations in the synagogue at Chorazin in Galilee and dates from the 4th–6th century; another one was discovered at the Delos Synagogue , complete with a footstool. In Yemen ,

3354-421: A uniform Yiddish orthography, based on observed practice but with proactive prescriptive intent. Strong difference of opinion about the relative merit of the two approaches has been a prominent aspect of the discussion from the outset and shows little sign of abating. Although the Yiddish alphabet as stated in the SYO is widely accepted as a baseline reference (with a few minor but frequently encountered variations),

3483-407: A vowel. There is a related need for marking the boundary between a yud and tsvey yudn where they appear adjacent to each other and, again, in the corresponding situation with vov and tsvey vovn . A dot under a yud ( khirik yud ) and to the left of a vov ( melupm vov ) unambiguously indicates the vocalic form of those letters. Harkavy does not use these pointed forms in

3612-461: A year, or in some synagogues on a triennial cycle, in weekly Torah portions during religious services). However, a synagogue is not always necessary for Jewish worship, due to adaptations during times of Jewish persecution in countries and regions that banned Judaism, frequently destroying and/or reappropriating synagogues into churches or even government buildings. Halakha (Jewish law from the Mishnah –

3741-553: Is ס׳איז ( s'iz , 'it's'). Although the Yiddish punctuation mark is termed an אַפּאָסטראָף ( apostrof ) the character used to represent it is the Hebrew geresh , which differs both in its graphic appearance and, more importantly, in its digital representation. (The APOSTROPHE is U+0027 , and the HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERESH is U+05F3 .) What is termed a double apostrophe is used to indicate abbreviation through

3870-488: Is an increasing tendency to forgo it entirely. The most frugal application of pointing is the distinction of pey and fey by enclosing a dot in the former (further details below). Immediately beyond that is the differentiation of the komets alef from the unpointed form and then the further use of the pasekh alef . Where additional points are applied, there can be significant variation in their number and disposition and there are often internal inconsistencies in

3999-711: Is commonly used in English , with its earliest mention in the 1st century Theodotos inscription in Jerusalem. Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul (from the Greek schola , which is also the source of the English "school") in everyday speech, and many continue to do so in English. Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal (from the Hebrew qahal "community"). Spanish and Portuguese Jews call

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4128-452: Is keyed to the Yiddish character repertoire as codified by YIVO. Other transliteration systems are also regularly employed in a variety of contexts, but none represent the full range of variant pronunciation in Yiddish dialects. Nor is the YIVO system equally appropriate phonetically to all languages using Roman script. This issue becomes particularly complex when dealing with older texts where little

4257-423: Is known about contemporaneous pronunciation; transmitting the fullest possible detail of their notation is historically important. There are several approaches to the romanization of such material. The YIVO transliteration system is solely intended to serve as an English-oriented phonetic counterpart to the modern Standard Yiddish described (and to some extent prescribed) in the SYO. That work does, however, consider

4386-525: Is listed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register . The building of a synagogue was raised as the Hobart Jewish community began to emerge in the 1830s. The Hobart Hebrew Congregation Synagogue was consecrated on 4 July 1845. The building was designed by Hobart Town architect James Thomson, who was a Scottish convict who was pardoned in 1829. Although several synagogues and churches were built in

4515-643: Is no longer practiced in Israel, the United Kingdom, or the United States, and which custom, as in former times, was dependent upon whether or not the wearer considered it a thing of contempt to stand before God while wearing shoes. In Christian countries, where it was thought not offensive to stand before a king while wearing shoes, it was likewise permitted to do so in a house of prayer. However, in Karaite Judaism,

4644-401: Is otherwise not part of any established Yiddish character repertoire, and its use in this context manifests conditions that are specific to computerized typography. The four possible representations of the pasekh tsvey yudn thus have even greater potential for causing confusion than do the other digraphs. A further potentially confusing option specific to computerized text production, but not

4773-435: Is presented in Yiddish, and a few romanized transcriptions are included only where needed to indicate variant pronunciation. Given that the YIVO standardization initiative has been severely criticized for failing to accommodate such variation, it may be worth noting that the SYO explicitly references the three major branches of Eastern Yiddish — Litvish (Northern), Poylish (Central), and Ukrainish (Southern), as developed in

4902-463: Is similarly dominant elsewhere. Other orthographies are frequently encountered in contemporary practice and are house standards for many publishers. A useful review of this variation is provided in the Oxford University כלל־תקנות פון יידישן אויסלייג ( klal takones fun yidishn oysleyg – "Standard Rules of Yiddish Orthography") ( Oxford 1992 and available online ), written in and codifying

5031-521: Is the chavurah ( חבורה , pl. chavurot , חבורות ), or prayer fellowship. These groups meet at a regular place and time, either in a private home or in a synagogue or other institutional space. In antiquity , the Pharisees lived near each other in chavurot and dined together to ensure that none of the food was unfit for consumption. Some synagogues bear the title " Great Synagogue ". Ukraine Romanization of Yiddish Yiddish orthography

5160-718: Is the writing system used for the Yiddish language . It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script , which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet . Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from Hebrew nikkud , commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach" (literally "points" as those marks are mostly point-like signs). Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share

5289-406: Is typified in דער איד ( Der Yid ), which is one of several weekly tabloids — others being דער בּלאט ( Der Blatt ) and די צייטונג ( di tsaytung , News Report ) — that all adhere to the earlier orthography and are in wider circulation and of substantially greater length than the broadsheet Forverts . It may also be seen in the online version of

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5418-412: Is used much more than veys , with veys limited to words of Semitic origin, the dagesh is avoided and rafe used instead. The rafe is an attribute of earlier Yiddish orthographic tradition and the dagesh is an adaptation of what is more generally a Hebrew practice. This also applies to the alternatives for indicating the distinction between yud when used as a consonant or as

5547-410: Is used that does not emulate a keyboard, the desired character will be chosen from a table on the basis of its appearance. Since such facilities display combining marks separately from base characters, it is likely that the precomposed character form of a character will be the more readily recognized of the alternatives. Most applications will accept either form of input, but frequently normalize it to

5676-505: Is welcome to all Jews, and currently runs Orthodox and Progressive services. The Tasmanian community reached a low point in the early 1970s when the census recorded fewer than 100 Jews in Hobart. The 2021 census recorded 376 Jews in Tasmania. Synagogue Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for Jewish prayer , study, assembly, and reading of the Torah (read in its entirety once

5805-540: Is written. His own work uses the form שלום־עליכם but in Soviet publication this is respelled phonetically to שאָלעמ־אלײכעמ also dispensing with the separate final-form mem and using the initial/medial form instead. This can be seen, together with a respelling of the name of the protagonist of his Tevye der milkhiker , by comparing the title pages of that work in the U.S. and Soviet editions illustrated next to this paragraph. The Germanized מילכיגער ( milkhiger ) in

5934-475: The alef in the words ייד [ yid ] and יידיש [ yidish ] (previously איד and אידיש ) and ייִנגל [ yingl ] (previously אינגל ), and now will spell the words with a khirik under the second yud as: ייִדיש ‎, ייִד and ייִנגל . The appearance of three alternate spellings for the name of the Yiddish language in a statement intended to describe its orthographic standardization might not require any comment if it were not for

6063-416: The pasekh tsvey yudn are available for all of the other pointed characters used in Yiddish, with largely indistinguishable visual results but with differing internal representations. Any such character that appears on either a physical or a virtual keyboard will normally be recorded as a two-character sequence consisting of the base character followed by the combining mark. If a graphic character selector

6192-630: The pasekh tsvey yudn are set in the heading of the Weinreich article (in his name) is discussed below. There are orthographic alternatives in the digital representation of Yiddish text that may not be visually apparent but are of crucial importance to computer applications that compare two sequences of characters to determine if they match exactly. Examples of this are database queries and spell checkers . Situations where differing representations of typographically similar characters can give unexpected or incorrect results are described below. This may prove

6321-522: The אַלגעמיינער זשורנאַל ( algemeyner zhurnal – Algemeiner Journal ), as well as in its printed edition. Extensive additional source material relevant to the stance of the daily press on orthographic reform is provided in Fishman 1981 . Editorial acceptance of varying orthographies is a general characteristic of Hasidic publication, and a single work written by multiple authors may differ in that regard from section to section depending on

6450-634: The Gospel of John ( John 9:22; 18:20 ) and the Book of Revelation ( Rev. 2:9; 3:9 ). It is used in the sense of 'assembly' in the Epistle of James ( James 2:2 ). Alternatively, the epistle of James (in Greek, clearly Ἰάκωβος or יעקב, anglicized to Jacob) refers to a place of assembly that was indeed Jewish, with Jacob ben Joseph perhaps an elder there. The specific word in James (Jacob) 2:2 could easily be rendered "synagogue", from

6579-684: The Heliopolite Nome . The first synagogues emerged in the Jewish diaspora , several centuries before their introduction to the Land of Israel . Evidence points to their existence as early as the Hellenistic period , notably in Alexandria , Ptolemaic Egypt , the world's foremost Greek-speaking city at the time. There, the first proseukhái ( Koinē Greek : προσευχαί , lit.   'places of prayer'; singular προσευχή proseukhē ) were built to provide

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6708-531: The Sephardic , Yemenite , Romaniote or Persian Jews of a town), style of religious observance (e.g., Reform or Orthodox synagogue), or by the followers of a particular rabbi , such as the shtiebelekh ( Yiddish : שטיבעלעך , romanized :  shtibelekh , singular שטיבל shtibl ) of Hasidic Judaism . The Hebrew term is bet knesset (בית כנסת) or "house of assembly". The Koine Greek -derived word synagogue (συναγωγή) also means "assembly" and

6837-474: The Yiddish Misplaced Pages . This is an expansive aspect of contemporary Yiddish publication and will require detailed accommodation in future codifications of orthographic practice. Orthographic reform, as considered here, embraces two distinct actions. The first is concerned with the way Yiddish words are spelled, as illustrated in the preceding section with the name of the language itself. The second relates to

6966-518: The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, including in Magdala, Gamla, Masada, Herodium, Modi‘in (Kh. Umm el-‘Umdan), Qiryat Sepher (Kh. Bad ‘Issa), and Kh. Diab. Aviam concluded that he thought almost every Jewish settlement at the time, whether it was a polis or a village, had a synagogue. During Late antiquity (third to seventh century CE), literary sources attest to the existence of

7095-612: The heikhal — היכל ‎ or 'temple' by Sephardic Jews , is a cabinet in which the Torah scrolls are kept. The ark in a synagogue is almost always positioned in such a way such that those who face it are facing towards Jerusalem . Thus, sanctuary seating plans in the Western world generally face east , while those east of Israel face west. Sanctuaries in Israel face towards Jerusalem. Occasionally synagogues face other directions for structural reasons; in such cases, some individuals might turn to face Jerusalem when standing for prayers, but

7224-415: The "Oral Torah") states that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever a minyan , a group of at least 10 Jewish adults, is assembled, often (but not necessarily) led by a rabbi . Worship can also happen alone or with fewer than ten people, but certain prayers are considered by halakha as solely communal; these can be recited only by a minyan. In terms of its specific ritual and liturgical functions,

7353-459: The 19th century and early 20th century heyday of historicist architecture, however, most historicist synagogues, even the most magnificent ones, did not attempt a pure style, or even any particular style, and are best described as eclectic. In the post-war era, synagogue architecture abandoned historicist styles for modernism. All synagogues contain a Bimah , a large, raised, reader's platform (called teḇah (reading dais) by Sephardim), where

7482-516: The 19th century, in an Ashkenazi synagogue, all seats most often faced the Torah Ark. In a Sephardic synagogue, seats were usually arranged around the perimeter of the sanctuary, but when the worshipers stood up to pray, everyone faced the Ark. Many current synagogues have an elaborate chair named for the prophet Elijah , which is only sat upon during the ceremony of Brit milah . In ancient synagogues,

7611-718: The Egyptian Revival style in the early nineteenth century, only a few are known to survive, they include the Downtown Presbyterian Church, Nashville , the First Presbyterian Church , New York , the Old Synagogue at Canterbury , England and the Launceston Synagogue . The synagogue is the focal point of Jewish culture in Hobart, and is the only structure owned by the community. The community

7740-512: The Egyptian Revival style. Currently the Hobart Synagogue has regular Orthodox and Progressive services. The land on which the synagogue stands was originally part of the garden of former convict Judah Solomon . It has a seating capacity of 150 and features hard benches at the back of the building for the Jewish convicts who in the early days were marched in under armed guard. The synagogue

7869-558: The Greek συναγωγὴν. During the first Christian centuries, Jewish Christians are hypothesized to have used houses of worship known in academic literature as synagogue-churches. Scholars have claimed to have identified such houses of worship of the Jews who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah in Jerusalem and Nazareth . There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. In fact,

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7998-527: The HYPHEN-MINUS ( U+002D ), but the HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF ( U+05BE ). The latter character appears as the horizontal mark flush with the top of the text in מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , 'mother tongue'; the common vernacular designation for the Yiddish language). Typeset text may also indicate hyphenation with a character resembling an equal sign (⸗), sometimes in an oblique variant, but this

8127-504: The IPA. There is no intrinsic reason why a transcription scheme cannot also be used for transliteration. In general, however, there is no expectation that the representation of a word in the source script can be retrieved from a transcription. Its purpose is to indicate how a word is pronounced, not its native orthography. The table in the following section indicates two alternatives each for romanized transliteration and phonetic transcription, and

8256-511: The Jewish congregants in Spain , the Maghreb (North Africa), Babylonia , the Land of Israel and Yemen having a custom to sit upon the floor, which had been strewn with mats and cushions, rather than upon chairs or benches. In other European towns and cities, however, Jewish congregants would sit upon chairs and benches. Today, the custom has spread in all places to sit upon chairs and benches. Until

8385-543: The Jewish custom was to remove one's shoes immediately prior to entering the synagogue, a custom that had been observed by Jews in other places in earlier times. The same practice of removing one's shoes before entering the synagogue was also largely observed among Jews in Morocco in the early 20th century. On the island of Djerba in Tunisia , Jews still remove their shoes when entering a synagogue. The custom of removing one's shoes

8514-532: The LCAAJ. The Dutch transliteration system was taken from the Jiddisch–Nederlands Woordenboek . The elements of the two transcription systems appear in this table as appropriate to the standard pronunciation discussed under the next heading. The same elements, particularly those indicating vowels and diphthongs , are associated with other Yiddish letters when other pronunciations are being transcribed. The table also includes several digraphs and

8643-491: The Land of Israel, late antiquity witnessed a significant increase in synagogue construction, in Galilee and Golan in the north and the southern hills of Judea , in the south. Each synagogue was constructed according to the means and religious customs of the local community. Notable examples include Capernaum , Bar'am , Beth Alpha , Maoz Haim , Meroth and Nabratein in the north, and Eshtemoa , Susya , Anim , and Maon in

8772-736: The Roman Empire and throughout the Byzantine period. The elements which distinguish Samaritan synagogues from contemporary Jewish ones are: Ancient Samaritan synagogues are mentioned by literary sources or have been found by archaeologists in the Diaspora, in the wider Holy Land, and specifically in Samaria. In the New Testament , the word appears 56 times, mostly in the Synoptic Gospels , but also in

8901-441: The SYO therefore frequently omits the rafe from fey , in harmonization with its unpointed final form, and makes the contrastive distinction from a pey solely with a dagesh in the latter ( פ פּ ). The similar avoidance of the rafe and preferential use of the dagesh is a common alternative for the contrastive distinction between beys and veys ( ב בּ ), although in Yiddish, because beys

9030-595: The Second Temple in 70 CE had prepared the Jews for life in the diaspora, where prayer would serve as the focus of Jewish worship. Despite the certain existence of synagogue-like spaces prior to the First Jewish–Roman War, the synagogue emerged as a focal point for Jewish worship upon the destruction of the Temple. For Jews living in the wake of the Revolt, the synagogue functioned as a "portable system of worship". Within

9159-405: The Temple was no longer accessible. It has been theorized that the synagogue became a place of worship in the region upon the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Jewish–Roman War ; however, others speculate that there had been places of prayer, apart from the Temple, during the Hellenistic period. The popularization of prayer over sacrifice during the years prior to the destruction of

9288-410: The Torah (reading dais) was commonly placed at the opposite side of the room from the Torah Ark, leaving the center of the floor empty for the use of a ceremonial procession carrying the Torah between the Ark and the reading table. Most contemporary synagogues feature a lectern for the rabbi. The Torah Ark , called in Hebrew ארון קודש ‎ Aron Kodesh or 'holy chest' , and alternatively called

9417-407: The Torah scroll is placed to be read. In Sephardi synagogues and traditional Ashkenazi synagogues it is also used as the prayer leader's reading desk. In Ashkenazi synagogues, the Torah was read on a reader's table located in the center of the room, while the leader of the prayer service, the hazzan , stood at his own lectern or table, facing the Ark. In Sephardic synagogues, the table for reading

9546-402: The additional use of pointed letters that were not in the Yiddish (or Hebrew) fonts of the day. This is a frequently cited reason for the SYO being slow to gain acceptance, but regardless of any opinion about their utility, most of the graphic elements introduced in that manner are now readily available. (The SYO explicitly states that pointing to disambiguate vowels does not change the identity of

9675-444: The alphabet: There are several areas in which Yiddish orthographic practice varies. One of them is the extent to which pointing is used to avoid ambiguity in the way a word may be read. This ranges from unpointed text, through a small number of pointed characters, to the redundant use of the full system of Hebraic vowel pointing. Text being prepared for print generally uses a certain amount of pointing. In other contexts, however, there

9804-399: The base character; a pointed alef, for example, is not a letter of its own.) The first edition of the SYO was preceded by a collection of essays published by YIVO in 1930 entitled, "A Standard of Yiddish Spelling; Discussion No. 1" ( דער איינהייטלעכער יידישער אויסלייג — der eynheytlekher yidisher oysleyg , YIVO 1930 ). Neither the title of this work, nor its contents, were written using

9933-468: The clear indication that the cardinal representation — יידיש — was neither the older nor the newer editorial preference. Regardless of the intent of that statement, a word-initial yud is consonantal and an adjacent yud is vocalic in all Yiddish orthographic systems, as is the constraint on a word initial tsvey yudn diphthong. Pointing the second yud in ייִדיש is therefore, indeed, redundant. The spelling אידיש also illustrates some of

10062-410: The combining characters. There are, however, some applications that normalize all input to precomposed characters. Digital texts containing the combining, and the precomposed alternatives are therefore both encountered. An example of extensive text using precomposed characters is provided by the online edition of the periodical לעבּנס־פֿראַגן ( lebns-fragn , Life Questions ). The present article

10191-421: The comma, period, colon, and semicolon — are the same in Yiddish as they are in English. The punctuation used for the abbreviation, contraction, and concatenation of words — the apostrophe and hyphen — are conceptually similar but typographically distinct in a manner that, yet again, can cause confusion when represented digitally. This can be illustrated with the contraction for עס איז ( es iz , 'it is'), which

10320-599: The congregation as a whole does not. The Ark is reminiscent of the Ark of the Covenant , which held the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments . This is the holiest spot in a synagogue, equivalent to the Holy of Holies . The Ark is often closed with an ornate curtain, the parochet פרוכת ‎, which hangs outside or inside the ark doors. Other traditional features include

10449-450: The conventions that YIVO was subsequently to put forward on its basis. The pivotal essay in the 1930 collection was written by Max Weinreich . His, "A Projected Uniform Yiddish Orthography" ( Weinreich 1930 ), was not written with the pointing that was to be prescribed in the SYO and introduces a character that was entirely absent from the previous repertoire. This is the V-shaped grapheme on

10578-404: The custom of removing one's shoes prior to entering a synagogue is still observed worldwide. In Orthodox synagogues, men and women do not sit together. The synagogue features a partition ( mechitza ) dividing the men's and women's seating areas, or a separate women's section located on a balcony. The German–Jewish Reform movement, which arose in the early 19th century, made many changes to

10707-434: The development of their תּקנות פֿון ייִדישן אויסלייג ( takones fun yidishn oysleyg – "Rules of Yiddish Orthography"), also known as the "SYO" ( Standard Yiddish Orthography ) or the "YIVO Rules" (1st edition YIVO 1935 , current edition SYO 1999 ). This has become the most frequently referenced such system in present-day use. Although it regularly figures in pedagogical contexts, it would be misleading to suggest that it

10836-406: The diacritical marking of the base characters, or through the similar use of some alternate script that is familiar to the intended audience. These approaches are all also seen in native Yiddish texts, where distinctions that cannot be directly represented with the basic Yiddish script but do need to be highlighted, are indicated by using additional Hebrew diacritical marks, with Roman letters, or with

10965-495: The dialectic breadth of the Yiddish language, the name of which is both written and pronounced with and without an initial consonant. In earlier texts, a single vov in word-initial position was often used to indicate / f / (a reflex of the German use of v to denote / f / ). Finally, letters other than shtumer alef may be used as silent indications of syllable boundaries and in compound consonants, as well as for extending

11094-526: The digraphs as two-key combinations, giving the corresponding two-letter sequences ( tsvey vovn U+05D5 U+05D5 ; vov yud U+05D5 U+05D9 ; tsvey yudn U+05D9 U+05D9 ). Although ligatures can be appropriate in monospaced typewritten text, other than in the smallest type sizes they rarely appear in proportional typesetting, where the elements of a digraph are normally letterspaced as individual characters (illustrated in Max Weinreich's name in

11223-515: The early 20th century, for cultural and political reasons, efforts were initiated toward the development of a uniform Yiddish orthography. A specimen initial practice was described in detail by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthography, and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish–English Dictionary ( Harkavy 1898 ). Additional illustrations of this variation are provided in source excerpts in Fishman 1981 , which also contains

11352-429: The facsimile text in the preceding section). It may be of further interest to note that a useful, albeit highly colloquial, test of whether digraphs are regarded as single or double characters is provided by the way they appear in crossword puzzles . In Yiddish, each element of a digraph is written in its own square (and the same practice applies to other word games where letters are allocated to positions of fixed width in

11481-420: The first letter in each pair is unequivocally denoted by a dot ( dagesh ) in the middle of the letter. The 'soft' ( fricative ) pronunciation is similarly notated with a horizontal bar over the letter ( rafe ). Most orthographic systems usually only point one of the two characters in a pair but may be inconsistent from pair to pair in indicating the hard or soft alternative. Text that otherwise conforms to

11610-562: The former exemplifies another widespread trend, daytshmerish , discussed further below. The efforts preliminary to the 1920 reform, which took place in several countries — most notably in Poland with focus on a uniform school curriculum — resulted in other devices that were not implemented as a result of any governmental mandate. These were further considered during the 1930s by the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut , YIVO ( YIVO 1930 ). This led to

11739-466: The former spelling is consistent with the SYO and appears in Uriel Weinreich's dictionary, he uses the unpointed alternative exclusively in his own Say it in Yiddish ( ISBN   0-486-20815-X ), a phrase book that contains the word in a large number of "Where is...?" queries and was published when the rules had already been well established. A further graphic example of this distinction is seen in

11868-600: The full phonetic transcription scheme is not amenable to presentation in the table below, its core elements have been included. This scheme has been used by later authors to indicate "phonetic transcription", and is labeled in that manner below. One recent example of this is provided in Jacobs 2005 . Another transcription system frequently cited in academic contexts was devised and presented (in German) by Solomon Birnbaum in Birnbaum 1918 and

11997-451: The graphic devices used to distinguish, for example, between א when representing what in English is an /a/ and when representing an /o/. The pointed אַ and אָ came into use for that purpose in the mid-18th century and were thus well established by the time the 20th century reforms were initiated, as were several other traditional Yiddish pointings. The most deeply entrenched of these was the distinction between פ fey and פּ pey . YIVO proposed

12126-481: The influence from other local religious buildings can often be seen in synagogue arches, domes and towers. Historically, synagogues were built in the prevailing architectural style of their time and place. Thus, the synagogue in Kaifeng, China , looked very like Chinese temples of that region and era, with its outer wall and open garden in which several buildings were arranged. The styles of the earliest synagogues resembled

12255-419: The length of an adjacent vowel. This became particularly common in deliberately Germanized orthographies dating from the late 19th century, collectively termed daytshmerish . Its most obvious further attributes are the heavy use of double consonants where traditional orthography uses single ones, and the gratuitous substitution of German vocabulary for established Yiddish words. The desire to reverse that trend

12384-466: The main table above, being among the details codified in the early 20th century. In the traditional Yiddish orthographies where these letters are not pointed, the vowel is indicated by preceding it with a shtumer alef (reducing the use of which was a major focus of the normative efforts). The single and digraph forms of, for example, vov can be separated either with a dot or an embedded alef as וווּ or וואו ( vu , 'where'). Although only

12513-418: The move toward unpointed text and is illustrated in the blog, Yiddish with an alef . This is of particular note given the late acceptance of the SYO by its parent publication, The Jewish Daily Forward , discussed below. There are two different ways in which each of the digraphs tsvey vovn , vov yud , and tsvey yudn can be typed on Yiddish and Hebrew keyboards (which are both commonly used for

12642-460: The next section) but the display is tolerably that of a fully marked digraph יַי and in some display environments may be indistinguishable from one or both of the previous alternatives. However, this option requires the storage of three separate characters ( U+05D9 U+05B7 U+05D9 ). As a fourth alternative, albeit the least stable typographically, the second of two consecutive yudn may be pointed ייַ ( U+05D9 U+05D9 U+05B7 ). A pasekh yud

12771-458: The numerical position of the character in the Unicode chart is given by following four hexadecimal digits). These ligatures are, however, frequently missing from Hebrew keyboards — a characteristic inherited from the similarly differentiated Yiddish and Hebrew typewriter layouts. A separate vov yud was, however, not provided on either. Hebrew typewriters were modified specifically for Yiddish by

12900-440: The official announcement, on 14 November 1997, of a change in editorial policy for the prominent Yiddish periodical, פֿאָרווערטס ( Forverts , Yiddish Forward ). It was first during that year that they adopted the YIVO orthography. The previous editorial position overtly opposed any such change and the following is included in the explanation of the shift (quoted in full in Schaechter 1999 , p. 109): And then we removed

13029-415: The other 1930 essays in which the typeset form was used, was later to dub this character the shpitsik maksl ("acute Maxy"), and it remains enshrined in the YIVO logo . Further orthographic variation is seen in other YIVO publications from the same period, also using markings that were not included in the SYO, but which did have typographic precedent (for example, אֵ to represent /e/). The way in which

13158-486: The preferences of the individual contributors or the typographic context. One example of the latter situation is the use of the pointed forms of alef only in specific instances where they are deemed necessary to avoid misreading. (As may be noted with the preceding discussion of the spelling of ייִדיש , and the pointing of both fey and pey , the SYO contains some redundant elements.) The online manifestation of such orthographic heterogeneity can readily be seen in

13287-493: The prescribed characters). A more extensive character repertoire is presented and discussed in Birnbaum 1918 . Although consonants are basically represented in the same manner, the indication of vowels differs more widely. One noteworthy situation that does pertain to the representation of consonants is the indication of phonetic distinctions between each of the four character pairs beys/veys , kof/khof , pey/fey , and tof/sof . The 'hard' ( plosive ) pronunciation of

13416-735: The production of Yiddish text). If the digraph appears on a single key, as is normal in a Yiddish keyboard layout, pressing that key will produce a single-character ligature . In the Unicode code chart the HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH DOUBLE VAV appears in position U+05F0 , the HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH VAV YOD at U+05F1 , and the HEBREW LIGATURE YIDDISH DOUBLE YOD at U+05F2 (where the U+ indicates that

13545-451: The regions centered on present-day Lithuania/Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine/Moldova. The SYO gives dialect-specific romanized equivalents for the following characters: A few further romanized equivalents are provided but do not indicate dialectal differences. These are identical to what is contained in the table in the preceding section, with the following exceptions: YIVO took Litvish as the standard dialect with only slight modification, to

13674-590: The removal of several consecutive letters. For example, דאָקטאָר ( doktor , 'doctor') is abbreviated ד״ר (equivalent to Dr. ). The punctuation mark is, however, not the QUOTATION MARK ( U+0022 ), but the HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERSHAYIM ( U+05F4 ), which is the dual form of the word geresh . Yiddish words are also hyphenated in a manner that is directly comparable to English punctuation. The character used to indicate it is, however, not

13803-525: The replacement of the first two keys in the second row, which were used for punctuation marks, with one shifting key for " tsvey yudn / tsvey vovn " and another for " komets alef / pey " (with dagesh ). This can be seen on a typewriter that belonged to the Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer [1] . Typewriters built directly for Yiddish include the same four additional characters in different positions, as can be seen on another typewriter that belonged to Singer [2] . The salient difference between

13932-622: The right to build synagogues without needing special permissions—synagogue architecture blossomed. Large Jewish communities wished to show not only their wealth but also their newly acquired status as citizens by constructing magnificent synagogues. These were built across Western Europe and in the United States in all of the historicist or revival styles then in fashion. Thus there were Neoclassical , Renaissance Revival architecture , Neo-Byzantine , Romanesque Revival , Moorish Revival , Gothic Revival , and Greek Revival . There are Egyptian Revival synagogues and even one Mayan Revival synagogue. In

14061-540: The same base character are also indicated by either pointing or adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any latter-day Hebrew context; others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants. Words of Aramaic and Hebrew origin are normally written in

14190-443: The second line of that text, replacing the tsvey vovn in Weinreich's name, and in the name of the city where the work was published, Vilna. It appears at numerous additional places in the text and in two other essays in the same collection but did not appear in any subsequent printed work. It was, however, included in the SYO as a recommendation for use in handwritten text, where it is also encountered. Yudl Mark, who authored one of

14319-521: The south. Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides (1138–1204) described the various customs in his day with respect to local synagogues: Synagogues and houses of study must be treated with respect. They are swept and sprinkled [with water] to lay the dust. In Spain and the Maghreb , in Babylonia and in the Holy Land , it is customary to kindle lamps in the synagogues and to spread mats on the floor upon which

14448-421: The spelling and phonetics of the YIVO system of romanized transliteration discussed below, remain subjects of particular contention. The intent of the SYO is not to describe the spectrum of traditional orthographic practice. The bulk of Yiddish literature predates the formulation of those rules and the discrepancies are significant. A few Yiddish letters and letter combinations are pronounced quite differently in

14577-476: The synagogue an esnoga and Portuguese Jews may call it a sinagoga . Persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the term kenesa , which is derived from Aramaic , and some Mizrahi Jews use kenis or qnis . In the earliest period, Jewish communal worship primarily revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem , serving as a central focal point and significant symbol for the entire Jewish nation. As such, it

14706-491: The synagogue does not replace the symbol of the long-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem . Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue. Synagogues have been constructed by ancient Jewish leaders, by wealthy patrons, as part of a wide range of human institutions including secular educational institutions, governments, and hotels, by the entire Jewish community of living in a particular village or region, or by sub-groups of Jewish people arrayed according to occupation, ethnicity (e.g.,

14835-616: The synagogue, Jews worshipped by way of prayer rather than sacrifices, which had previously served as the main form of worship within the Second Temple. In 1995, Howard Clark Kee argued that synagogues were not a developed feature of Jewish life prior to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE). Kee interpreted his findings as evidence that the mentions of synagogues in the New Testament , including Jesus's visitations of synagogues in various Jewish settlements in Israel, were anachronistic. However, by 2018, Mordechai Aviam reported that there were now at least nine synagogues excavated known to pre-date

14964-601: The temples of other cults of the Eastern Roman Empire . The surviving synagogues of medieval Spain are embellished with mudéjar plasterwork. The surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest and Prague are typical Gothic structures. With the emancipation of Jews in Western European countries in the 19th century—which not only enabled Jews to enter fields of enterprise from which they were formerly barred, but gave them

15093-453: The totally undecorated YIVO romanization. The SYO listing of the Yiddish alphabet (which predates the Weinreich dictionary) explicitly states that the vowels with combining points, and the vov and yud digraphs, are not counted as separate letters, nor are the additional consonant digraphs and trigraphs listed at all: The order of the letters in the alphabet is as follows, from right to left: These are not counted as separate letters of

15222-467: The traditional look of the synagogue, keeping with its desire to simultaneously stay Jewish yet be accepted by the surrounding culture. The first Reform synagogue , which opened in Hamburg in 1811, introduced changes that made the synagogue look more like a church. These included: the installation of an organ to accompany the prayers (even on Shabbat , when musical instruments are proscribed by halakha ),

15351-451: The traditional orthography of the source language—i.e., the orthography of these words, which is consonant-based , is generally preserved ( Niborski 2012 ). All other Yiddish words are represented with phonemic orthography . Both forms can appear in a single word—for example, where a Yiddish affix is applied to a Hebrew stem. Yiddish diacritics may also be applied to words that are otherwise written entirely with traditional orthography. In

15480-516: The transcription of variant pronunciation as will be discussed below. YIVO published a major study of the range of Yiddish phonetic variation in The Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry , commonly referred to as the LCAAJ . This uses a detailed system of marked Roman characters and suprasegmental marks to indicate that variation, and does not apply standard YIVO transliteration at all. Although

15609-437: The two designs is that each key on the Yiddish typewriter produces one character only, available in two different sizes through shifting. As a result of the widespread practice of writing Yiddish on Hebrew keyboards and other legacy effects of the variant digraph forms on both modified Hebrew and native Yiddish typewriters, when Yiddish text is entered from a computer keyboard with single-key digraphs, many people nonetheless type

15738-486: The various Yiddish dialects . Whatever impact this may have on the discussion of standardized orthography, it becomes a significant factor when Yiddish is transliterated into other scripts. It is entirely possible to assign a specific character or sequence of characters in, for example, the Latin alphabet to a specific character or character sequence in the Yiddish alphabet. The transliterated form will, however, be pronounced in

15867-586: The various systems presented through the 17th century, including extensive source excerpts, is provided in Frakes 2007 . The Harkavy treatise cited above describes a late 19th-century system that is based on the pronunciation of the Northeastern Yiddish dialect, Litvish , for an anglophone audience. This was also a mainstay of the standardization efforts of YIVO, resulting in the romanization system described in detail below. The Harkavy and YIVO initiatives provide

15996-482: The worshippers sit. In the lands of Edom ( Christendom ), they sit in synagogues upon chairs [or benches]. The Samaritan house of worship is also called a synagogue. During the third and second centuries BCE, the Hellenistic period , the Greek word used in the Diaspora by Samaritans and Jews was the same, proseukhē Koinē Greek : προσευχή , lit.   'place of prayer', plural προσευχαί prosukhái );

16125-429: Was a major contributor. The Roman characters appearing in the SYO correspond to those used in the LCAAJ, and their marking according to Central European orthographic convention provides greater flexibility in notating dialectal distinction than does an English-oriented approach. Phonetic transcription is therefore common in linguistic discourse about Yiddish, often using a wide range of diacritical marks in clear contrast to

16254-504: Was another of the reasons for the effort toward orthographic standardization. Publishers of Yiddish newspapers have, however, been particularly conservative in their attitude toward that development and the preceding editorial statement in Forverts provides a useful capsule summary of the details about which opinions differed. Other current Yiddish newspapers and magazines retain the spelling אידיש and many elements of daytshmerish . This

16383-583: Was the destination for Jews making pilgrimages during the three major annual festivals commanded by the Torah : Passover , Shavuot and Sukkot . There are several known cases of Jewish communities in Egypt with their own temples, such as the Temple at Elephantine established by refugees from the Kingdom of Judah during the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt , and a few centuries later, the Temple of Onias in

16512-521: Was used in his later German works, as well as his English publication Birnbaum 1979 . This was intended to provide extreme flexibility in the representation of differences between dialects but failed to gain further practical acceptance due to its intricacy and idiosyncratic appearance: This table lists the Yiddish alphabet as described in the Uriel Weinreich English–Yiddish–English Dictionary ( Weinreich 1968 ), with

16641-451: Was written using combining characters with the exception of the second row in the following table, which is provided to illustrate the differences between the two forms. In a viewing environment prone to the misalignment of base characters with their combining marks, precomposed characters are more likely to be typographically stable (but may cause greater difficulty in other regards). The punctuation marks used to indicate sentence structure —

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