חיים

You have to love language.  Not because we speak it.  (After all, most of us simply speak it badly.)

No, because of the nuances and implications of how the words evolved.

For example, most of you consider our language, English, to have evolved from Greek origins.  After all, the word ‘alphabet’ is a conglomeration of the first two letters of the Greek language- alpha and beta.  Or is it?

A much older language, one that had fallen into disuse and was revived millennia later by Eliezer Ben Yehuda (whose name is as synonymous on its dictionaries as Webster is for English dictionaries), has its first letters as aleph, bet, gimel, dalet, heh…. (I deliberately used the transliterated Hebrew so you could see the connection.)  And, the first Greek letters?  Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon…

Enough of that…

As Hebrew got revived by Ben Yehuda, and new words came into being, curious things developed.   Since the first plane to land on Israeli soil came from France (not to mention the chosen word’s similarity to the word for air), it’s not surprising the original word for airplane was אווירון  …aviron.   Amazingly similar to the French word avion- especially with the pronunciation that obtains.  (Nowadays, the word for airplane is matos מטוס from the way a vulture flies…)

That’s all by way of introduction.  The real thing I want to talk about today is the word חיים (Chayim).  You know that word- life.  (As in- To life, to life, l’chayim…)

Do you know that Hebrew is the only language in the world that uses the plural to describe life.  Think about that.

It’s because our tradition knows that no life is singular.  We reside in the plural.  We need another for personal existence; we need many others to achieve our results.   It’s like the major philosophy of our religion- תקון עולם  (Tikun Olam)- our commandment to leave the world a better place, a little bit better each and every day.  We have to be part of a whole- our life was never meant to be solitary.

Consider that for the thought to start your week.

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