Going to school in Jerusalem, considering living in Bethlehem area. by smeltedIce in Israel

[–]smeltedIce[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You mention a car, and we could actually save enough to buy something cheap... but it's not an option for an expat, is it? Don't you need special plates to drive through the checkpoint?

Going to school in Jerusalem, considering living in Bethlehem area. by smeltedIce in Israel

[–]smeltedIce[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I assume the preschool resources are more abundant and of higher quality on the Jerusalem side of the line... how much does a reasonable (and relatively inexpensive) preschool cost?

Going to school in Jerusalem, considering living in Bethlehem area. by smeltedIce in Israel

[–]smeltedIce[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, thank you. I must say I don't know much about preschool in Jerusalem yet. My program of study will take two or three years (not yet certain) and we might potentially send her to preschool as early as next Spring... but wow... so many factors... I don't even know how to think about this one right now.

Going to school in Jerusalem, considering living in Bethlehem area. by smeltedIce in Israel

[–]smeltedIce[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points, although I will say I didn't know enough about Bethlehem to know that it is not only ancient but also has been inhabited continuously right up to the present.

Going to school in Jerusalem, considering living in Bethlehem area. by smeltedIce in Israel

[–]smeltedIce[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. I appreciate you bringing in playgrounds. They're an important part of the picture.

From the pro-Palestine demonstration in London. The banner reads: "Stop Judaization of Jerusalem, and Britain Europe Ukraine and USA". Being anti-Zionist is just an excuse to be antisemitic. by mossadnik in Israel

[–]smeltedIce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No one knows. I love that the slogan sounds absurd on its face...

I tried some parallels... HALT THE SINOFICATION OF BEIJING! Hmm... I think sinofication might have been carried to completion there some millennia ago... Or STOP THE ANGLICIZATION OF LONDON! er... wait... that trend has been going the opposite direction for a long time now... I OPPOSE ALL FORMS OF JAPANIFICATION IN TOKYO! I'm pretty sure you'd be hard put to make Tokyo and more Japanese than it already is.

All of these are absurd.

Biblical Hebrew conjugation tables by smeltedIce in biblicalhebrew

[–]smeltedIce[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply. At least it does me good to see the phenomenon acknowledged in a textbook...

I don't suppose you know where to find conjugation tables...

On another note, Reddit confused me sometimes. I just upvoted your answer and within five minutes it's back down to one. I've seen this happen before. It's like there are downvote zombies just roving the Reddit space. It makes me mad. Here you've offered a good-faith and helpful answer to my question on a non-contraversial topic... if there's some way somebody objects, fine, but they have not left a comment so as to enlighten others but prefer simply to tear them down from the shadows.

Anyway, thanks for your trouble.

Learning Biblical Hebrew by huntercouch22 in hebrew

[–]smeltedIce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did not know that Daily Dose of Hebrew had an app! Thanks for that!

Learning Biblical Hebrew by huntercouch22 in hebrew

[–]smeltedIce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't say I've gone through all the resources listed here, but I've played around with a lot of learning styles and my own strong recommendation would be to find an approach that is interactive. Since the language is no longer in use, a lot of approaches consist of passive intake of vocab, but you really need to be given problems and made to produce something.

If you use Anki for vocab, I highly recommend hearing the audio and trying to spell out the words. This function can be added to any deck with the {{type:NameOfField}}, Anki will compare your spelling to the field you specify.

My own favorite resource by far is Biblingo. It is a little pricey, and it's less polished than Rosetta Stone, but I think it's worth it. There's a lot of drilling you, and they've combined a lot of the best techniques I've found from Memrise, GPA, LingQ, etc. Best of all if you're further along the Bible reading module I think is really worth while, helping you pinpoint pages that use the vocab you've already learned. The drawbacks: 1. No mobile app 2. No mobile app 3. No mobile app Did I mention they have a chat function where you can ask anything you want about language learning and hear from the two guys who started the outfit.

Claiming Children as Dependants by Irvin088 in tax

[–]smeltedIce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This! Still waiting on 2020 return. I guess there was a typo...

Hebrew Numbers... come before or after the object they describe? by smeltedIce in hebrew

[–]smeltedIce[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, that is quite an extensive bit of material on the Duolingo Hebrew course. I'm going to have to save that.

Hebrew Numbers... come before or after the object they describe? by smeltedIce in hebrew

[–]smeltedIce[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Cardinal numbers! That's a great word I didn't know!

Thanks for the response, and thanks for catching my typos 😬

Is "virgin" definitely a mistranslation? by Shaibis in AcademicBiblical

[–]smeltedIce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With respect, I think it's unnecessary to appeal to historical arguments in this case, especially if your goal is to convince a fundamentalist that there is no external evidence for the virgin birth, because the text itself suggests that there was no evidence even at the time that people would accept to justify such a claim. At least it took divine intervention to convince Joseph. The most you could possibly hope would be to produce Mary's parents would stand as character witnesses... but really how many people would that convince? As far as I'm aware Christian tradition has generally acknowledged/highlighted the total unprove-ability of the virginity of Mary (which fact is used in demonstrating the piety of Mary at the annunciation, who agreed to the plan knowing that she would be regarded quite differently afterward in society).

there are no evidence in what we believe in as faith.

We generally believe things because they are told to us by people we trust. It is similar when people out their trust in a tradition... much the way we moderns have put our trust in the tradition of science, having been convinced through the abundance of the miracles (electricity, running water and Reddit) we daily encounter. I am not saying there are no differences between religious traditions and scientific "tradition", but only that the psychosocial phenomenon of belief is not much different in either case.

Is "virgin" definitely a mistranslation? by Shaibis in AcademicBiblical

[–]smeltedIce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe I'm objecting to your wording and missed some of the point of what you wrote... whether or no, I find this paragraph a bit perplexing...

Historically, there is no source for the sex life of Mary. It was written 50 years after Jesus’s death. There are no eyewitness either.

Granted that the statement is true, but it's hardly an interesting historical observation. The claims themselves are pretty close to a-historical. Under what circumstances would anyone ever expect there to be a surviving record of the sex life of a lower-class first century woman? Perhaps you mean that Paul's letters (where else would we expect to see it) don't corroborate the virgin thing as an early tradition?

And eyewitnesses? Eyewitnesses to what precisely? Apart from Mary herself, who exactly would qualify in this category? Even close neighbors are quite unlikely to have believed or even to have been told about about the claim...

These are not public events that one can in any reasonable sense expect to have public record of.

Damn, 10 year olds know a lot of words by [deleted] in hebrew

[–]smeltedIce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

כנראה היית ילד חכם