Hi, everyone! Here’s a link where you can view and download the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1de6CSRkmq7n6kxVtFrX2PuLM0VEY2VKbxUsSeGR10Is/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you! I was about to ask for that! :)

Hi, Hadass here, she/they in chilly Winnipeg, excited to be here and loving Mazel's hat!

Hi, I'm Miriam she/they from NYC, feeling very lowwww keyyy

Rivkah Hadassah, ze/hir, so hype to be here!!!!

Thanks Hadass XD loving ur presence ^_^

I'm Emmett, pronouns they/them, and I'm feeling tired and realizing part of it is because I need to eat the dinner sitting next to me. :)

Julie, Philly, love Mazel's hat- made me smile

jack, he.they, eh-la-vay-ted

Be'te'avon Emmett, don't forget to eat!

DeShaun, he/him, very excited to be here! 😄

Nechoma she/her ready to learn

hi y'all, Laynie, they/them, excited!

Thanks Hadass!

Hi, everyone! Here’s a link where you can view and download the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1de6CSRkmq7n6kxVtFrX2PuLM0VEY2VKbxUsSeGR10Is/edit?usp=sharing

hihi, mollyyyy, she, feeling Full

Russell, He/Him, A little tired

Elana, pronouns in zoom name, pumped up to learn some Hebrew grammar! איך קען אױך רעדן ייִדיש :)

Roan, he/him, tired and delighted

Thena here, they/them, portaling in from Seattle <3

Sasha / they/them/ grateful to be here. xo

Hi, everyone! Here’s a link where you can view and download the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1de6CSRkmq7n6kxVtFrX2PuLM0VEY2VKbxUsSeGR10Is/edit?usp=sharing

Nancy (she /her) Ohlone Land (Berkeley CA) Excited to learn the binyanim

Sarah Elise. They&she, juuuuust finished babysitting 30 seconds ago

Nicolia, they.she, a little harried in arriving

I’m Thursday, they and she pronouns. I’m on Chinook and Clackamas lands (PDX)

Greetings from the Muddy Waters!

mayim (any/all), from council of 3 fires land (great lakes area), feeling excited and disheveled!

Sharing slides again for new arrivals~ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1de6CSRkmq7n6kxVtFrX2PuLM0VEY2VKbxUsSeGR10Is/edit?usp=sharing

Having grown up in Israel, I feel you in my bones, Sarit.

I saw a thing online once that said, "English: The language that mugs other languages in back alleys and picks their pockets for loose grammar"

Sharing slides again if needed~ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1de6CSRkmq7n6kxVtFrX2PuLM0VEY2VKbxUsSeGR10Is/edit?usp=sharing

Read more about our community norms on our website! https://svara.org/community-norms/

thanks Mazel :^)

Q: What brings you here? (out loud or in chat)

I like grammar! I'm working on learning more Hebrew grammar, and the binyanim don't like me much yet, so I want to get to know them better.

I wanted to have a greater sense of how the verbs work and how they can help me better understand texts.

As I lead services more and more and lean toward cantorial school, I want to improve my Hebrew

The binyanim are a new and exciting adventure. Many times in Mishna Collective - I wished for a class on binyanim and here it is!

Julie: Binyanim are holding me back in my SVARA learning. Need to get a better handle it.

Also I fucking missed y’all

I love grammar. I love the concept of the Binyamin but am not so familiar with them individually.

I have been so inspired and impacted by Sarit & Noah's teaching and framing of this dazzling and challenging stuff

I want to understand what I'm reading when I'm studying Torah or Talmud better, I think learning is really exciting!

@Sarah Elise, yes! I love Svara spaces, and being here also just feels good. :)

my chevrusa and I have been studying independently for about 6 months now and a better understanding of Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic grammar would be very helpful

I am a huge language junkie and am fascinated by the verbal system of semitic languages!

I love Torah and have committed to learning and deepening as much as possible this year

i find it so ridiculous that i understand shorashim but when i look at a word in a binyan i can’t recognize it for shit lol

I am studying Torah, Talmud, and other texts (in original language) regularly for the first time everrr and feel more capable of working with binyanim than I have before!

The earlier workshop was mind-blowing and also I know I didn't get all of it. As a crip, the embodied part is confusing and scary, but very worth looking at. (and what Nancy said_

i find them like such a cool puzzle and also infuriating lol

Structure

Q: When you hear/read the word “grammar,” what word or feeling comes to mind? (Please put one word into the chat!)

I’m here to bask in the glow of Sarit and Noah (and the reverberatory glows of all of us) and to deepen + continue the ways I feel learning Hebrew moves and changes me as a Being

FUN PUZZLE

Puzzlew

Building!

rules

Puzzle*

LOVE IT

control

Structure

Framework

prescriptive!

Foundation

prescriptivism

Structure

rules

technical

Vague and unspoken rules

meaning

fabric

structure/support

Tingly invigoration

boring until it's confusing

Scaffolding

logic puzzle!

Handhold/foothold

English grammar evokes the image of lots of red pen marks. I am hoping that this grammar class is more like a key that unlocks the meaning of words and passages.

Hebrew has much better grammar than English.

Oh wow, I love that image, Nancy!

When/who was that -- the Jewish folks who first started studying Hebrew/Aramaic this way?

I want to look them up and learn more is why I'm asking. :)

In a future class, can you link articles?

Wikipedia mentions Sa'adia Gaon

I just googled first Hebrew grammarian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_grammarians

In Hebrew, the names of G-d are often verbs.

command

together

join!

dang, should have just guessed

Aren’t they all, tho

It had to be either join or glitter...

🦄

Mitzvah joins us to community and to G!d

re: the comment earlier on Indigenous languages and verbs, are you referring to Indigenous languages of so called North America? I'm familiar with the animate/inanimate grammatical divide in e.g. Ojibwe, Cree, Chinuk Wawa but I'm not sure that's what you're referring to

here yet be dragonsso many languages have fallenoff of the edge of the worldinto the dragon’s mouth. somewhere there be monsters whose teethare sharp and sparkle with lostpeople. lost poems. whoamong us can imagine ourselvesunimagined? whoamong us can speak with so fragiletongue and remain proud?~Lucille Clifton

Poem link as well~ http://www.thepoetryplayground.com/2021/04/21/here-yet-be-dragons-clifton/

re: Elana, i think it was about the amount of verbs in some indigenous languages compared to how much nouns dominate english!

sorry for the long pause--the chat was covering the words!

this poem makes me sad

Mimi with the best closing line ever! "And the dog learned to read!"

thanks, mayim and julie!

thank you Emmett, Mimi, and Nicolia!

Thanks y’all!!!

Such deeeeep sweetness, Julie and Thursday. ✨

FYI we'll be correcting the auto CC in the chat here while captioner is on break!

thanks team, and for welcoming my family, and apologies for the cliffhanger ;)

*I want to know more

*categorize

*top-down

I’m enjoying tumbling in Emmett’s comment of a poem about language written in a language, made of individual symbolic images, denoting meaning on so many levels.

Oh man. I didn't bring this up in group, but related to what Sarah Elise said -- PREPOSITIONS are wild. Like, which concepts of relationship are grouped together in one language versus another ...

*piece

Thanks Roan, Jason and Russell! Interesting conversation about how meaning is created differently in different languages.

Thank you so much!

*Nicolia

we got curious about what is universal, what comes before language, if anything!

*Emmett

*Mayim said

Roan referenced the movie Arrival, and Jason was reminded of an Ursula K LeGuin story.

YES!!! Prepositions so rarely translate 1:1 between 2 languages

also Laynie shared about how our brains change when we learn to read and we wondered about just what that does

yes! magic thank you I love that!!!!

Re prepositions: some languages don’t even have prepositions!!!

Wasn't that a Non Sequiteur comic? And they end up killing them, I think.

We wondered about who gets to define when a language is a legitimate distinct language, especially when there is constant movement and evolution in language?

And the magic of signed language as well!

that was AWESOME Emmett

yes please send that story!!! if you can!!

@jason which leguin story?

yeah, love le guin!

Oh man, I read the story Arrival is based on and it was SO GOOD

in the group I was in we talked aft relativity of language and the struggle to meet each other in the middle to a common understanding, with knowing that whoever we are communicating with has different connections to words and experiences, and to not assume someone has the same connections to words as we do. We also talked about ASL and the concept of “direct translations” and how ASL is embedded in its own culture and community and there is no “direct” or “exact” translation.

Also re: Spanish -- when I first learned that Spanish had different words for tired like sleepy and tired like worn out, it blew my tiny eight-year-old brain.

Spoken language allows for communication across space, written language allows for communication through time beyond our own lifespans.

thinking about secret languages between siblings and when does that become a ‘legit’ language!

I was also reminded of Rabbi Arthur Green talking about how YWHW is more like a verb than a noun.

seems like part of what we’re talking about is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, so dropping this wiki link here in case it’s of interest to anybody: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Didn’t Hebrew pick up past, present, and future from Greek?

I wonder if the Le Guin story being referenced is "The Dispossessed", which had an anarchist society that lacked possessive pronouns

I don't think so @Sarah, Biblical Hebrew predates Greek, doesn't it?

@bodie - yes! and how the attempt to “direct translation” from ASL to english is gloss and you can see how much is lost

Another book with really neat language stuff in it: "Embassytown" by China Mieville

I love your spiral snail shape

There was an attempt to foster a single universal language, Esperanto. many countries felt a loss of their cultural heritage with its development and it never took off.

to pass over, transgress

עבר -- to swell/be thick, to cross over, to transgress

Oh my

sorrynotsorry

What was the meaning of pa-al?

act

templates

Wait, what was poo-al?

hufal does what? causative... something?

passive

thanks!

This is the root for Ivrit isn't it!!

yes, because we are Ivrim

yes

OH I think I use this word in a blessing for transition when doing my hormones

and aveyah/transgression?

It's tricky because it becomes ee-ber. Dagesh in the vet

explode?

Expand?

Choke?

Become pregnant

To be possessed like ibbur

the transgenderism of it all

Heh-eh-vir - to pass

pass through

tempt?

Push out/over/across?

Can you write what this root looks like in each of the binyanim so we can see how it is pronounced?

the ayin makes it tricky

it can't take the shva so it changes a little bit

no that's with a vav

yes but iver as in blind is a different root

homonyms

I’m thinking about a ferry person, bringing someone/something across

ayin vav resh is blind

to be passed

Receiver of the action?

To be passed to?

if you take katav - nichtav is written

Oh not to be committed TO something like an ideal, but to commit something, like a transgression

Get filled up?

I;m sorry, i'm lost, cld u repeat about pual?

to be filled/completed?

to be made full (by something)

to be completed? I can't think of a word but that would make sense

to be removed

be displaced

Kidney stones ?

lol

painful!

Oooh like to cause a kidney stone to pass lol

"I passed the kidney stones" "the stones passed"

I feel like the farther out on the spiral, the less “rooted” the word becomes? Is anyone else getting that vibe?

commute? lol

(The more interpretive it gets)

Super interesting take, Sarah Elise!

The word has more ornamentation as it moves out of the spiral, so may feel less like, close to the root

This is where the pregnancy feels like it might come in -- to cause oneself to inflate/swell?

to transition!

To delude yourself

That's very Biblical

G-d's wrath

Its like self eating

Yeah, exactly

Spiral handout: https://svara.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Embodying-Binyanim-PDF.pdf

Huh, thinking about other examples -- is "vayinafash" in "shavat vayinafash" in hitpael? I feel like I've heard it translated as Hashem "ensoul-ing" Hashemself ...

Schrodinger's date!

Survey: which binyan are you most drawn to for next time?https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XQJo7g9C-ullU4dLzoT1ZuPaNIvkbtMlAK0Jp8gev74/edit

Lesbian sheeping with a binyan

Yes Emmett!

@hadass awesome, thanks for confirming that. :)

I really appreciate the creativity and new model creation. I experienced this as confusing. It really helps me to hear the word. it is also harder to read with a graphic in the background. I know that there are different binyanim with different meaning but don't understand how to recognize them.

Survey again ~ which binyan are you most drawn to for next time?https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XQJo7g9C-ullU4dLzoT1ZuPaNIvkbtMlAK0Jp8gev74/edit

Thank you!

thank you sarit and noah! thank you esther for captions! and hazel for tech!

*mazel

thank you so much!!

You got it! Sorry about that~

Thank you all!

Noah & Sarit, thank you both so much! THank you Esther & Mazel! What a true joy!

Thank you!!

this was such a fun class! I like that it was more of a general overview and beginning to the concepts, makes me excited for what we will do next !

Very creative and fun

Can't wait for the afterparty! It's my favourite part of Svara classes.

what a gift. thank you

thank you all!!

thank you so much! have to listen to my screaming body now, good night, lovelies!

i feel very cool about this new format that helps me see how the different binyanim are related

It's fascinating -- I watched the workshop when y'all did it last time, and I found it frustrating and confusing … And now that I know a bit more and can think of examples more easily I'm finding it much easier to sink my teeth into.

I am deeply and gratefully and humbly stirred. 💞