There is something for Everyone at them
JCC Maccabi Pro-sport Camps
The BiG Story
from page 59
Ages 6-14
WNBA Detroit Shock Girl's Basketball Camp • Golden Bear Oasis Golf • NFL Flag
Football • Planet Rock Rock Climbing • JCC Soccer Camp • JCC Tennis Camp •
Heavner's Canoe/Kayak • In-Line Hockey at Soccer Zone • Detroit Archery • Carl
Childress c& Fred Goldberg Baseball Camp • Maybury Horseback Riding • Renaissance
Fencing • Basketball Unlimited • Cheer! Michigan Cheerleading • Oakland Gymnastics
• Ken Levy's Coed Kickboxing • NBA Basketball- Hoops 33 • JCC Lacrosse Camp
Hurry, spots are filling up quickly!
The JCC Maccabi Pro-Sport Camps are the best in town.
With over 33 different sessions to choose from, one is sure to interest you!
For more information or to receive a brochure, please call (248) 661-1010.
There is still a limited number of spaces available for children with special needs to participate
in Summer Camp with an advocate. Call (248) 661-7737 for more information.
D. Dan and Betty Kahn Building • 6600 West Maple Rd. • (248) 661-1000
Jimmy Prentis Morris Building • A. Alfred Taubman Campus • 15110 West Ten Mile Rd. • (248) 967-4030
191, Q-ro
tatectt\-1, PoDd
three God, His angels and the rest
of the world. One of the more inter-
esting aspects of the tagin occurs
when all the letters on which they
are used are placed together, form-
ing an abbreviation for ger tzedek,
righteous convert. Tagin were con-
templated frequently by one of
Judaism's most scholarly and
beloved figures, Rabbi Akiva, him-
self the son of a convert.
* Each letter of the Hebrew
alphabet holds a numerical value,
with aleph as 1, bet as 2 and so
forth. Larger numbers are created
by combining two or more letters.
The most famous of these combi-
nations is, of course, chet and
yud. This makes 18 and forms the
word chai, or life, inarguably the
top charitable gift announced on
holidays in every synagogue and
temple. Some also believe the yud
and chet combina-
tion brings good
luck, and wear it
on embarrassingly
large gold medal-
lions hanging from
their necks. But
before you buy
your chai charm,
take_this into con-
sideration: The
Torah makes no
mention of numeri-
cal values for
Hebrew letters. In fact, this tradi-
tion began around 135 BCE and
is based on a Greek custom.
* Midrash states that the artist
Bezalel was able to complete the
Holy Tabernacle, in which the Ten
Commandments were contained,
only because he knew a magical
combination of Hebrew letters.
Join us g the grand getaway Summar
Foi-Dgy Comp
August 6-g, 1999
Butz& Conference Center, Ortonville MI
(Only 45 minutes away)
ster or for more inform
-397-4876 or 248-354-
3/5
1999
62 Detroit Jewish News
onnection a community-wide project of Jewi
Agency for Jewish Education and Jewish
* The Talmud recounts that God
formed our world by using the letter
hey, then used the letter yud to create
the world to come. The two letters
combined make one of God's names.
* Tradition tells that the letter yud
complained to God when it was
removed from Sarai's name after it
was changed to Sarah. So God
renamed Hosea by adding a yud,
to make it Joshua_
x Max Gondos provided the first
Hebrew shorthand in 1866. What
took so long? Until the late 1880s,c__-\/
Hebrew was a language relegated
mostly to Jewish texts. Only after
World War I, when it was accepted
as an official language of Palestine,
did Hebrew find any popular usage.
x In addition to the regular let-
ters, the alephbet consists of five 16;=;
ters to be used only at the end of
words: chet, nun, mem, tzadee and
peh. According to the Talmud, these
were created by the prophets and
had been known initially only by a
select few, including Adam, Abra-
ham, Isaac, Jacob ,/
and Joseph, after
whose death they
vanished. The letters
were later revealed
to the Jewish people
through Moses,
who was said to
have seen God cr:/
,
ating crowns for the
letters when he
received the Ten
Commandments.
x A great deal
of mystery exists about the letter
aleph, which begins the Hebrew c;
alphabet. The rabbis stated that
while God gave the Ten Com-
mandments to Moses, He Himself
spoke only the first letter on the
tablets — aleph, which begins the
word anee, or "I" (from "I am the
Lord your God ...") The letter is
pronounced rather faintly, not
unlike a deep whisper (as with "a"
in "April"). Later, the aleph came
to be associated with the most
secret and unknowable aspects of
God.