Ktav Ivri (Hebrew Script) by Rabbi Anthony Manning

good morning everybody bck Welcome to everybody thank you for coming good to see everybody here I'd like to uh just remind you please to turn off your phones um and we'll make a quick start I'd also like to to thank our sponsors for 2024 the sheram has sponsored leish BR Bas brandit and zelig Ben cman and we're very grateful for that sponsorship and we have two more shearing before shavat uh this week and next Monday next Monday is almost area shavat um and we'll uh we'll have a very different topic next week please God but today actually I'd like to have some fun with you um because this is a really interesting um fun and also very relevant topic because shavat obviously we we think about the Ten Commandments we read about the Ten Commandments the giving of the Torah um and sometimes we forget and sometimes we remember we'll see some interesting uh examples of this that there was a massive change at the beginning of the second temple or was there we'll see today in the sense that the font was changed we're not talking here about language we're assuming that Hebrew was Hebrew throughout from even before the time of the avat certainly through the giving of the Torah and afterwards Aramaic we'll talk about soon but we're talking about the fonts because the Hebrew font that we read today is called by kazal AIT the Assyrian font we'll see what that means in a minute whereas all of the um all of the uh inscriptions and uh and uh uh all the archaeology that we dig up from the first temple period and also some of the second sample period is written in what's called kav I the Hebrew fun let's not get confused kav I is the old one kavuri is what we have today and I've brought you on page one and there'll be more diagrams as we go through the sheet um some examples of kav I um first of all on the right hand side of the top I've brought you the basic alphabet Al giml you'll see some of the letters look similar to the way we write them Alf is pretty much an Alf it looks a bit like a modern script Alf but some of them look quite different dad you'll see is a triangle um which if you know Greek you'll immediately say well that's Delta that's clearly and all you need to do is tip it a little bit on its side and it turns into a D um quite quite happily um others are a little bit different as well um the the hay is very different although again uh if you uh if you kind of turn it on its side a little bit it can turn into an e quite easily and that translates into the modern world um and others as well just look at the mem for a second which is sort of squealy line and there's a connection also with May Etc that doesn't look unlike a modern day M um ion looks a bit like an O and there are lots of connections and I brought you in the middle of the page a uh a chart showing the different letters of uh the alphabet the English alphabet various paleo Hebrew uh Canaanite alphabets as well and you can see and you can look at that in your spare time and compare and contrast a few other things that I brought you here on the top left I brought you the T zet ABC and that's what it's called an ABC from ABC because it is it was dug up around from around 1,50 BCE so that's pretty early we're talking before David um and we don't know exactly who wrote it maybe it was a kid in third grade writing practicing his his Al um but we we dug that up and we found it uh and it basically spells out the ALF that we know and love with a few interesting exceptions if you look here and are inverted it goes and then P not pay which is very interesting I wrote the the Hebrew underneath it now what's also interesting is that some of the tahim when they have an acostic they go payon it changes the order and when you realize that the ancient alphabet there were certainly versions of it which were payon um then that that speaks to you as well I'm not sure what this does for gatria honestly um if p is before iron and hey is before he is after VAV but let's leave gatria to one side as Kaz say gatri is the icing on the cake it's parar it's the kind of sprinkles on the top we don't actually learn the main issues from gatria very rarely do we learn something fundamental from gatria the other uh the other thing that I brought you on the side here is the gazer calendar the gazer calendar was dug up around gazer it dates from around 1,000 BCE it's written in Hebrew it's written inav I and I transcribed it here on the bottom on the right hand side you can see what it is it's basically goes through the year and it says basically two months of harvest and Andes and you can see I put it in English as as well it's a basic calendar written again inav I goes through the whole year it's harvesting sewing planting reaping different kinds of reaping and what I like at the end of it it's signed by a fellow called AI at the bottom he puts his name AI it may be AIA it was originally but I I find it very touching that someone 3,000 years ago wrote a Hebrew Canada and signed off AI um and that's my name as well Abraham um but uh that they are some examples of kav iy and if you look on the top of page two lots of details today I brought you a shekele coin the one shekele coin if you ever have a shekele in your pocket I don't seem to carry any change with me ever anymore um but if you ever have a shekele in your pocket just turn it over you'll see this kind of Lily Motif which was an ancient Motif and the Tav iy wording yud he yood and this is a copy of an ancient ancient coin from the midc temple period when I brought you the coin on the left which has the same Motif and the same writing originally Persian as well eventually they will move to Yehuda and yehud is obviously Yehuda this was an ancient Jewish coin not the earliest ever coinage the earliest ever coinage is probably from the turkey region uh but it's very ancient and it's again very special I think that we have in our pocket the these coins which have the kav iy on them um after if you like the original coinage now what what does what does Judaism say about this was were the Ten Commandments originally given inav I orav asuri and we will bring we will bring Charlton hon as a witness soon have no fear he will make an appearance today okay which what was the original K so let's have a look in Source Number One Source number one Source number three and Source number five are the same gar um the it's it's a continual continuing sugya and I just interspersed Rashi in between inss number two four and six so the other numbers are basically the sugya and we'll pick and choose our rashies so let's start from number one RDA now he's an important name some G say RDA some sayra but RDA will be an important person remember him he's an Amur they're all Amur from the time of the G Maybe in the originally the Torah was given to the Jews now does it matter it says and not is that relevant but it was given in the ancient Fontes Ines in Hebrew and again Hebrew is a very ancient language I'll just mention in passing there is a fundamental debate between the ramb myones Andes as to why Lash KES is called lash Kesh according to the cabalists of whomis is one lashes is Kesh because it's the language which God created the world using whatever that means that God uses Hebrew it has intrinsic kadha if you were to wave a kadha counter over Hebrew as it were it would register differently to English just like erit Israel according to the cabalistic view has an intrinsic kadha the ramban myones has a very different approach to all of these things um he understands the lashes is called because there are no vulgar words in Hebrew when modern Hebrew was invented they had to import swear words and curse words from English which has them in abundance um Arabic they turned other words which are not swear words into swear words like Azazel which is a pretty light word by today's standards but nevertheless lashan Kadesh has no um swear words in it and similarly the rambam sayses is kades because it's an opportunity to do more and connect to Hashem not intrinsically but that's a bigger topic not for now but the original font was and the original language was Hebrew okay and then something new happened in the times of Ezra beginning of the second temple it was given to them again that's when we changed the font to today's font the AR and we went into Aramaic because Aramaic of course is the language of Babylonia and we brought that back with us to Israel bir the Jewish people made a decision a decision at the early second temple period we decided to stay with the new font the change of Fontes but we said we're not giving up on Hebrew we're going to go back to Hebrew we'll keep the Aramaic and that eventually became the tum which we still have and which for many generations was read in shul shabas and they left for the we'll see who they are in a minute the The Ordinary People the ho pooy they left for them lashan arami Aramaic and this ancient script man y who are these these uh ordinary peoplea here's Raa again these are the ktim who are the ktim the ktim are the people that you and I know as the Samaritans so just look for a second let's talk about the Samaritans before we go on just skip to page number eight and try not to look at Charlton hon on the bottom of the page who are the Samaritans the Samaritans live in the North I don't know if you've ever been to shamim the village that the Samaritans have there it's a very very interesting place to visit um there's all sorts of stuff up there and it's near the if people have relatives living in har the sh live there they live in Tel Aviv and these are the people who are descended at least according to us from the ktim where did theim come from so look in number 31 the in it says that the he brought from B from from excuse me he brought from all these Eastern countries in Iran in Iraq he brought people over and he put them into the shamr is in place of the Jews who off the 10 lost tribes to the other side of the Empire the sh and these people lived from that day in Shaman and they've been there ever since um and basically that's our understanding of them if you look at the uh the H the continuation of that chapter in MIM bed it'll tell you that what happened to the shamim basically they uh they didn't convert originally and they were attacked by lions and then they converted because they were scared of the Lions and there was a question all the way from that period of time onwards into kazal was this conversion a good conversion or a bad conversion and all the way through the mishna the gar kind of flim flams back and forth maybe they were real converts maybe they were not real converts the conclusion is they were not real converts and they're not halachically Jewish but they consider themselves to be halachically Jewish in fact they reject this entire narrative you know our narrative is that s mixed everybody up that was his political system move them to here move them to here they say we're from the tribe of Ephraim we came in together with the Jewish people and we all went to harim and haral which of course they did in saua but they say there was a big makus and Elli haken got brus with everybody up there and he took everyone down to Yus and they stayed in haral and harim and they've been there ever since and they claim that they're Jewish they're very Jewish true Jews it's not that they deny that we're Jewish but they claim that they're Jewish therefore they won't marry Arabs and the Arabs won't marry them but the Jews won't marry them either because we say that they're not Jewish so they basically have nobody to marry other than each other and therefore there's an enormous amount of intermarriage and genetic problems if you go to meet them you see this immediately but what's interesting is their whole um culture uses kav I they have kav rivy in the mot which they don't have on parment but they write over the doors um as as writing on the doors Al and they're all in I went to visit the sh many years ago went on a trip on and I asked them a few questions we were with a very nice family they claimed that they only have the written Torah they have the five books of the Kash and say for yosua with a few changes here and there so I asked the fellow living there um do you have separate dishes for milk and fliks I didn't say milk and fliks because he wouldn't have known what that meant but I said and he looked at me as I like insulted him and said he said like so I said to him there's something funny going on because nobody who was using written Torah alone would think to have separate dishes for meat and milk cuz there's no indication or hint in the Torah that that's what you have to have it's very rabbinic so he looked at me with a worried look and he said to me he said I'll have to ask the coing gadal they have a Coen gadal so if you ever and I never got back to him and he never got back to me so if you ever go to the see the shim just go to visit the Coen gadal it's a good uh shortcut and you'll be able to to work it out there and they do of course the Corban p on a different date they have a different calendar but the shamim have been there ever since now go back please now to page two and let's carry on so we left I to the shamim and the shamim were serious enemies of the Jews as we'll see quite soon um but originally it was our script okay mik IIT so in the middle of um number one in s in line three mik what is this um ancient font here he is again there's a big debate as to what Liv means maybe it's large script maybe it's script from the shamron area maybe from Lebanon not getting into that now T and there's a that supports this opinion says Ezra was worthy that he could have been Moses he could have received the Torah mosha but mosha got there first so Ezra didn't get a new Torah he he he reinvigorated the Torah even though he didn't get a new Torah he changed the font and he brings a posk from Ezra what's happening in Ezra the shamim here they are again are writing to the Persians to try and get them to stop the building of the betam mikdash they were very antagonistic towards the resettlement of Israel in shivat because they said you're not the real Jews we're the real Jews you're settlers you've come from other places you're colonialists you're taking our land and they said and we said to them what are you talking about we were here for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years we've not even been gone that long but there was a big fight so they wrote a letter to the to the Persian authorities and it says there the writing of the means the letter It Was Written In aramit in AR and it was translated in AR however this word is is connected going to say to the word shin they wrote in a changed fonts in a changed script and it also says about baz's Feast they weren't able to read the writing and they weren't able to explain it to the m so what's going on it's bringing all these stories um belshazzar's Feast as well you know I'm sure Bazar was the grandson of nead Neta and before the whole Persian period he celebrated the 70 years of uh of the the the uh the prophecy that the Jews would go back to the land within 70 years it hadn't happened he brought out the kalim from the betam mikdash it says there in Danielle and he celebrated the end of the Jews and then in the middle of the night as in the party a hand came out from the from the you know on the wall and started writing on the wall and they couldn't many many take far and they couldn't read the writing now why couldn't they read the writing there were Persians there there were Babylonians there there were Jews there at the party that's another discussion why were the Jews at the party no one could could read the writing so it's saying here the reason they couldn't read the writing is because they changed the fonts that's the new fonts and no one could read the new font that shows you it was a new font okay they couldn't read it and it says and even earlier and this whole gamarra is really dealing with that phrase as well that Moshe wrote something called the Mish Torah the second Torah or the repetition of the Torah but again the word Mish implies there's going to be a change Shinu to the Torah meaning something that was one day going to change so that Ezra didn't just make it up on his own coded into the Torah from the very beginning was the potential for a change of the font is what K wants to say and and why is this font called because it came from them back from Assyria this was a a script in Assyria or at least the script that the Jews were using in Assyria they brought it back with them according to this first opinion the Torah and everything was originally given inav I who changed the fonts Ezra changed the front why did he change the font we'll see soon his reasons for changing the font but this first opinion seems very clear that the original script of everything that we had was kav I now have a look let's go back now sorry to have you flipping around to um to B shazza's feast and to the Ten Commandments look again on page number eight so whoever prepared the movie and and advised cesil B demill back in 1956 and I'm sure you watched this movie multiple times back in the day when there was really nothing much else to watch especially on the holidays um and uh cesil be de Mill took advice and when they actually wrote the luos for the film for Charlton hon you can see that they wrote them in kav iy which is actually quite intelligent of them um and I actually spent a bit of time it was probably not really the time the most usually spent decoding what they actually wrote to see if they actually did write the asera sbras and the answer is they did they missed out one they missed out number three for some reason probably because they couldn't fit it on and also if yav I is up to anything you'll see look at the top of the second Lu the one on the left hand side it actually starts okay you can always spot the uh the dad the triangle dad which means that they for some reason pushed number five up to the top now I don't know maybe just they ran out of space I have no idea um if you're interested there was an auction auctioning off these original fiberglass hope to break it to you fiberglass L and they wanted $80,000 for them um I don't know if it was bought if it's still available uh you can I brought you a link to see the video that they put there um I also got a little bit frustrated that I couldn't see cuz his hand was in the way whether it says Z isas or sh but I was able to see and find another picture and it says Z so it's the first not the second but you see they put a little bit of effort into it I actually once went with my wife to California we went to the man Chinese thto where these are now or at least they were then on on on show and and uh the lady said to me these are the Ten Commandments he says but it's just gibberish that's written on them it's just uh you know people just scratched it and I said I hate to break it to you but it's not true it's actually the Ten Commandments anyway um Bel shazar if you look on the right you'll see the famous rembrand from 1635 of Bel shazar and you'll see he writes there many many T ofin um and he actually gets the the vertical idea from the continuation of this sug in Sanhedrin rembrand um had a uh a friendship with RAV manab and Israel in Amsterdam in the 1620s 30s and he took advice as to how to write it and no doubt he was told by his Jewish clients and Jewish friends this is how you should write it and and they wrote it vertically although there is actually a mistake um the last letter instead of being a final nun he wrote as a Zion and that is a bit of a mystery as to why he did that because if you actually take an UltraViolet scan and look at the original draft that he made he wrote it as a nun and then he turned it into a Zion so that's a mystery you can go away and think about that I don't want to spend much longer on it but Zion is actually wrong now back to page number two so this is the first she time the original crap the script was and it was changed number three now number three the second sh we're not going to be folding going around much now we're going to stick with the order number three Tanya a second re rebi says no originally the original was the one we have now and when the Jewish people s Ed when which sin what sin doesn't say it was changed to roit is another name for the kind of squiggly um script the and when they came back came back meaning did Chua but maybe even came back physically D Chua returned to the land they got the old the original kav back andik why is it called AIT not because it came from Assyria because we originally had it according to the second opinion it's calligraphic it's beautiful it's very very elegant whereas the Tav iy is a bunch of scratches on on the stone um and doesn't lend itself to this kind of artistic it's nothing to do with aure according to this got nothing to do with aure it's just a beautiful script here I want to look at Rashi look at number four in Rashi is Rashi explains when did we get our present script be mosha it was the original scripts why couldn't they read it in baz's Feast there should have been people to read it they sinned during the first temple period and they disgraced the Torah the and therefore they this was taken away they went back to or they went to the local Canaanite script of saav iy so rashi's understanding of the gar is thatav Ashi was too holy it was taken away from them during the first temple period but the original L the original toras they were written inavi now we we don't have any evidence that there was anything from the first temple period or before in kavuri all we've ever found isav I so that fits better with the first understanding but we always have to understand and we had a whole sheer on this once about archaeology archaeology can never actually give you a definitive answer it can tell you based on what we found so far this is what we think but of course tomorrow morning we could find something completely groundbreaking and and totally new which will change our whole understanding so who knows maybe there will be a future find but right now we haven't found anything so that's the second opinion there was originally the Cav we have now it was changed when we sinned rash's first temple and then it was brought back when we did Chua and finally number five Rish benaza om this is all says in the name of this are a very authoritative group of that come and say there was never a switch we always use the current fonts the we always used it as it says in it says when he talks about the Mish it calls the clips the the hooks V theim that were for the pillars now why were they called V in modern Hebrew a VAV is a hook because it looks like a v it looks like a V A V really looks much more like a VAV inav than inav looks like a funny kind of hook but inav it really looks like a hook by the way Hebrew is an amazing language VAV looks like a hook it means a hook if you go to a shop and ask for some V that give you Hooks and it acts as a hook and is a conjunction so it hooks together two parts of the sentence you don't get that with English you know cat the word cat doesn't look like a cat act like a cat or act as a cat you know it it is just a nominal name for a cat fine so he says we never changed anything just like the pillars never changed SCH never changed the pillars when he built the temple he just put the original mishan away and built a completely new building never changed the Mish so to the never changed and you see from they wrote to the Jews in their language and in their in their script and in their language just like the language never changed they spoke Hebrew so to theim they never changed so three opinions again let's just refresh our memories opinion number one originally it was I switched by Ezra completely non-jewish font brought in okay um everything was originally i l Tor according to the second opinion it started kavuri and then we lost it and then we we got it back again and according to the third opinion nothing ever changed we always had kavuri ah why are we digging up all this stuff of kav I presumably there were other people also using Tav I we'll we'll see in a minute some interesting examples of that but these are the three opinions okay what are we going to do with that is there a pack who do we follow flip over to page three and you see on page three if you look you may have noticed at the top of the page I decided to change my name that's normally on the sheets uh into kav iy okay um I I I may I try and sign a check like that and bet on the top my son actually many years ago when he was in 12th grade got got into kav I he probably got me more interested in kav iy he worked in irid um and uh and he would spent his time really learning to read and writing saivi when he did his degree he asked his Professor um if I write my paper in saav I will you give me 100% so the professor laughed and said yes and he wrote the whole paper by hand in saav iy eight or nine pages all in saav iy and he handed it I don't know if the professor even looked at it or just said fine 100% that's fine but uh I is is a lot of fun now how do we put this together with other mid look at number seven famous mid in when M went on high he found God tying crowns little tags onto the letters well the only letters which have tags arei you can't have any tags onav I so is this any kind of indication and the answer of course is no not at all because this is a midrash of God writing a saer Torah God doesn't use any font this is not meant to be an account of what Moshe saw it's a kazal are using the example of as if God's writing a saer Torah and of course they're thinking because that's what they were using in the time of kazal so I don't think we can read too much into that number it's a very fascinating midash by the way I'm not getting into the whole midrash but when you unpack it it's absolutely fundamental but it's not meant to be taken in a literal way as most M are not number eight here he is again owned him this I think is more familiar the kazal in shabas say that the L were carved all the way through you could read them from both sides okay which is actually a very interesting idea from the God's side from The Human Side there's a kind of comparison between them um but the me and the Sam how do they stand up because they have a piece in the middle so that must have stood up by a ace well me and Sam first of all there is no final me in there are no final letters at all and me doesn't look anything like a round thing and samak doesn't look anything like a round thing what's the letter that looks like a round iron which is like an i because they were all pictograms originally so how this definitely is assuming sa on the L until of course you get to number nine where thei says Le according to the view that says they were written in it wasn't the which was a it was the which was a and according to the other opinion that it was given in so thei anticipates both views well maybe it was the iron that was the N according to the kav people and maybe it was the Sam ACC people but it doesn't come down one way or the other why is this important well it's important L because um a great deal of cabalistic significance is invested in the shape of the letters if anyone's ever studied this just take an Alf an Alf is created inavi as a V with a yud above it and an inverted yud below it that is an Alf and there's an enormous amount of Torah on that because that is gatria 26 which is sham Hashem and you have an A yud above and a yud below and a reflection in between it's the Mala and the Mata you can give a whole people do RAB Yakov marus I don't know if anyone's come across him um gives excellent shm on the on the on the mystical Resonance of the Hebrew letters well if you're going to go with kav I then then that becomes very challenging because if the original Lucas were written in the kind of uh you know kav I mode then none of those shapes have any relevance anymore because that wasn't written like that on the contrary it was a non-jewish script that came from Assyria question that's interesting you're going to say why was why did they pick on the iron I not pick on the dad I never thought of that that's a great question maybe the iron looks more like a Sam and therefore I hear I hear I hear the truth is if you look on the chart again on page one there are other slightly different ways of writing the dad it's not always like a donut like a homas rather it has other things okay so let's have a look at the rishonim there are basically three approaches in the rishonim which view are we going to follow the view of the first view that it was originally and then changed the second view that it was originally then went back and then changed back and the last view that didn't never changed so let's start with the rishonim with the yeah with the rishonim number 11 look with me please at one of the Chas of the gim and we'll we'll see we'll see a couple of lines of this and then we'll look in this view takes a very strong position nothing ever changed the script we have is the script we had look at here number 11 we don't passing like this first few because he was there were earlier tanim than him and there are three different views this one is pure is mostly am we passing like the they're more authoritative but there are three basic views this is the first view that was changed he came from Assyria the and he brings proofs and then this says like it's it's it's nonsense you mustn't believe this because it's not true for this reason it's not true for that reason and then again he says Mish a few times they're very firm in the way they reject this and they Pas him the here Pas him very clearly like the last few nothing ever changed we always had Ai and we never changed it look in he also reflects this in number 12 he was a very early ran in the 11th century look what he says in number 12 we like we don't like this one we pass that what we have now is given at because the the stood out on the fine he brings that as well theim just like theim never changed so too nothing ever changed we don't pass him that anything ever changed rather who because he was the ra he was the authoritative one of all of these opinion and you never passing like Aid when compared to AR and therefore he says again and again and again the kav never changed the kav never changed and if you ask most people they'll probably say that is the opinion that they've heard that is the opinion that they follow but that is not the only View and I want to show you a few fascinating ideas there's a lot of writing here we won't read every single thing but I want to show you a few of these ideas first of all look at the rambam the rambam on the mishna what does the rambam say about number 13 says the rambam as follows kav a this is the kav of a maybe the person a from the other side from Mesopotamia he knows about the sh this is what the shim WR the Torah using we use today this is and that's the with which God wrote the Torah that's a very interesting phrase when did God write the Torah we had a Shear on this two weeks ago God wrote the luos the first luos but God write a Torah is this a whole new approach to us and he says no God rote a Tor with is called a because it's very beautiful Etc he seems to go with the middle opinion or maybe the last opinion but he certainly doesn't think that thef came from Assyria the rambam comes out and says this original kav was with us from the very beginning and this is the kav we have today that's his position we put on hold this question of what does it mean that God wrote the Torah however the ritah has a much more work through sh let's look at the ritah number 14 him I want to look at in some detail the ritah was a cabalist and he writes in his com his commentary on Milla as follows number 14 I'm very I'm astounded that people will think that we just switch the font the every single this is the cabalist talking every single little um Spike on the letters has cabalistic significance we may we really look in great detail at the exact shape of the letters and I said you can have a whole course on that this was ayrian this belongs to the non-jews and the were written it's a disgrace how can you say that these letters have great Holiness and he brings the whole thing of the written in and that's why it's called he gives a new thesis but it only appeared on the only the Hebrew the language was known to they spoke that and that's what God speaks to the in assuming that God uses words to speak to the as opposed to just sounds or or Visions in their mind but that only appeared sorry I miss back line even [Music] so because this was such a perfect such a holy they didn't use it for anything else only the or call when everyone wrote their own Torah they didn't they wouldn't use this they would write it they would downgrade and when did they forget according to the r what was written inuri only Theos and when did they stop looking at the luos when they buried them and when did they bury them when they buried Theon KES with The KES theas were in Theon KES and from that time onwards no one had access at all to kavi meaning I don't know who was looking in Theon KES to look at the anyway but he says all they had was now according to the rvah this is very interesting because that actually fits with the archaeological record he says the only thing that was ever written in the Holy script that we have now was the luus everything else was Tak everything else isav and at the time of Ezra they got it back it's a bit difficult to see how they got it back if it was hidden away underground and he Mak some suggestions all of which are a little bit difficult that like there were some people who still remembered and they brought it back and Ezra they decided when they did Chua go three lines from the bottom of the Endra and in the time of Ezra they allowed them once again to write a sa with the regular script they were allowed to come back to the script that we have now and really as didn't really change anything he didn't really change anything because he just went back to the original fascinating basically he says only the L the radas goes a stage further the rvas says in number 16 I'll summarize it outside he says not just the L but only the first L he says who wrote the first luos Hashem who wrote the second L Moshe and he says the rvas understands when the gorah says they sinned it wasn't first temple idolatry Moshe had the written he smashed them and then from then on it was kav I all the way even the second luas were written inav I again C doesn't work according to to the rvas either because they're the first luas it shouldn't be the first L however what's very interesting is one of my students pointed out to me once that if you think about it it's very hard to write on Stone inav asui it's much easier to write in I just scratches basically on the stone so that makes a lot of sense who wrote the original Hashem calligraphy on the stone whereas Moshe basically just etched it out in I and that's how he wants to look at it but everybody's really concerned about this but again they're all basically going with the that the original original script was kavi the one person who doesn't do that who in many ways is the most interesting I think of all is the and him I want to turn to now go over to page five because I think you'll find this one of the most interesting sources of all who is the seim the saarim was R Alo he lived in Spain in the 1400s before the expulsion page five number 17 look at what he says he actually wants to pass going like the first opinion everything the L the T originally was in the ancient Canaanite script number 17 so why did they change it when they left B Ezra when they came back to Israel said we need to make a not a what's a of the Redemption because the people one day will be back in Exile and they need to have just like we were redeemed once we'll be redeemed again the second Redemption the first Redemption of course was in we don't need to remember that with anything else because it's in the but he he I want to do something he said to remember the the with did two things he left aside the original Hebrew script and he chose the foreign script to remember that they were exiled to Assyria and they came back from there and then he brings all his proofs that everything was originally inav what is the second thing that Ezra changed this is the second paragraph what was the second thing the calendar why do we have non-jewish names for the months of the year Nissan Tam El these were all non-jewish aod zaras in Assyria and in Babylonia tamas is mentioned a number of times people sometimes say is it is it kesan or is it Mar kesan so say oh it's kesan but it's Mar because there's no you know holidays in it it's called mares the AAR was called Maran that's why it's Maran okay why do we changed the days of the we never changed the days of the week we stuck with y y y we didn't do what the non-jews do with Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday all of odorus but we change the names of the month says the seim because just like we we came out of those foreign lands and to remember we came out of them we've got the months of the year with the foreign names this will give us that one day we will be redeemed once again we'll all come back does that mean that when we come back from Ek and London the months are going to be called January February March April May June July I don't know probably not but he says they basically changed it we in the Torah it says and by the way in the Torah there's a reason for both for both both countings why do we number the days of the week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 what are we counting two what are we counting from shabas that says the ramban is is a Kum is a fulfillment of the Mitzvah of Zar is Yas every time you say shabas you're doing the Mitzvah shabas I'm remembering shabas originally there was a Mitzvah similarly with the months to count from Nissan why because Nissan is the month of redemption comes along the saor aim and said that was just a temporary thing once we had a second Redemption we changed it to it's quite a radical thesis since when a Mitzvah is in the Torah just temporary and like we can switch them to something that has more resonance now we came out of bavel it's it's an unusual thing and the maharal and the other Aron are apoplectic about this idea both that the original L written in and all the cabala goes out of the window and secondly that we just switch the Mitzvah in the middle and we we we chose names of the month just look at the maral for a second the maral number 19 the maral is outraged Bim and the he can't question the bonafides of the the he's one of the greatest he wants to prove the one of the original mitv to count from niss with the numbers it got cancelled and and the font got got switched and it was all changed this is total and utter nonsense he needs to do cha too late by the time of the mar he's already in the and they're dealing with it there but he says I've never had anything like it that we just canceled the Mitzvah that we just changed and similarly I brought you in number 20 um other um outraged uh ideas um this is the commentary on the uh the the uh the the um the anak of and he also brings down it's horrified that you could even suggest such a thing but that is the suggestion of the ikim and actually R cook who is writing um obviously in the 20th century he really says that the the the uh the main answer is indeed like the SE and actually it was originally all kav kav I and it was actually changed if you look at number 21 for a second again there's lots of you lots for you to do in homework on this you can actually uh you can actually uh do it later number 21 he quotes another here saying that it was originally always the script we have now other people want to say if you look in the it's it's it was the and ra wants to say originally was and he says that's really the pastas that works with the archaeology um and uh that's really what we're allowed to hold and therefore aside from the outrage if you like of some of the other maim um I brought you some other ideas as well R cook says that the original kav was too difficult only the coim could do it and therefore they brought in an easy xav that people could read the m has a very interesting um idea as well where he says thatav I and there are other people that talk about this as well once the Samaritans were using saav iy we needed to distance ourselves from the Samaritans and another reason that maybe they was part of the religious politics that we needed to change the kav so that we could put some some space between us this is the terima between us and the Samaritans so that we could make it clear that we were not like them and they were not the authentic Jews Etc so there's an awful lot going on here however once you actually understand this other things begin to make sense go to the page seven and we'll look at a few interesting things just to finish off in the last 10 minutes first of all um by the way if you're really interested in looking more on this R Kasha in the T Shala there's the big editions of T Shala he has a 35 page essay onav I and kav he goes through every single permutation and combination of how the different MIM understand it but I brought you here from the ramban the ran wrote his com commentary on the when he lived in Spain and then he made Al and when he made he added certain comments now that I live in Israel I actually think a bit differently one of the famous comments that we looked at in depth once was kevel he says when I lived in Spain and I looked at theim I assumed that kevel was north of yam somewhere near piscat Z but when I came to yush everybody's going south to bet so I I imagine they're right because they wouldn't be going south if it wasn't South and he says I've switched my kind of view on that and there's if you look if you're interested in that um rabbi Shalom has a number of essays on whether what's the evidence for a northern Rael for a sou Southern Rael and and you can look at that but one of the other things he talks about is the coins have a look here in number 25 he says here God has given me a till I got to live in a AK was the place to be in the time of the ramban that's where the Jews lived was pretty much desolate um he said I went to live in a and I found in you know the Arabs the Elder Arabs I found they had what did they have coins with pictures on them with actual writing on them one side had almost had like a um um a staff on it which is this pomegranate looking thing okay Shak Mel Shak which he says is an Armond but maybe it's a pomegranate maybe it's an Armond and the other side had like a bowl and there was writing on both of the sides and I couldn't read it he says because he didn't reav he couldn't reav so who did he go to he went to the Samaritans he showed it to the Samaritans and they read it straight off this is which was left for the Samaritans sanin as we see in sanedrin on one side it said and the other side it said which is very interesting because what they had was a coin from the b sheni period which was they used to use as theim and he couldn't read it and the Samaritans read it and there were these coins in um in circulation and the ramban was very excited to find it by the way sometimes even when Sav iy had gone out they brought it back as a kind of Jewish Pride symbol some of the bar K coinage is inav I now by the time of Barba nobody was using saav it was ancient by his time but it kind of resonated with a kind of nationalistic Jewish bride this is the ancient kav this is what we're going to bring back so that's one interesting thing that you see from the ramban and there's a lot by the way to say about the ramban's attitude to archaeology which we talked about once but not today another thing which maybe makes more sense is when you look at some of the midashim and theim that talk about making marks for example number 26 theim were anointed how are they anointed you'll take the you'll you'll anoint the how do they did they anoint the the says number 27 they anointed them with a Kai they anointed them with a Greek with a Greek letter Kai now the Greek letter Kai is like an X hence the chastic structures which have that kind of structure within them why on Earth would they be anointing the km with a Greek letter Kai what does that have to do to anything but if you think for a second about I what is a letter that looks like an X it's a tough It's the final tough and what is a tough a tough is a Mark it's the Mark when you mark something you mark it like that that as in x marks the spot I don't know whether that connects to anything at all but the idea of that Mark and that's actually explicit in look at number 29 go to the city Mark a t a tough Mark Mark a on the the people who are groaning mark so you think to yourself when you read well he's marking a t why is he writing the letter t on everybody's face but again if you think about sa I it's not the letter Tav like we have the letter Tav it's the letter Tav like an ex that that he's making an ex on their heads and actually I brought you a few other diagrams here as well if you look for a second um we looked at page number eight but look at page number nine look at the last page I'll show you a couple of other fascinating things so first of all I brought you a itan Bible in Samaritan script they actually have the Bible in in a book form if you go to the Samaritans and they get out their Kash it's actually not a safe it's not in M it's in a book form but they write it with a kind of Samaritan script whenever I mention the Samaritans my student they all say they always say are they the Good Samaritans they don't have a clue what the Good Samaritan is okay so the The Good Samaritans is obviously not a quote from our script but from our tanak from the from the New Testament but of course of course that's the whole point the Samaritans were the rejected people cuz they were against the Jews so the Good Samaritan is was the guy who came to help and the bad Jew was the guy who didn't help and that's all part of the pmic in in New Testament literature U what I think is uh absolutely fascinating is the oldest posk that we ever found it was dug up just around the corner in k k is around the corner here just where uh you know where the ban Center is and they dug out of the ground there they found they found a a grave that had been actually hidden from grave robbers because the roof had collapsed on top of it so people didn't know it was there and when they excavated they found it and they found rolled up on a tiny piece of metal I think it was silver etched in um the the writing that I brought you on the right hand side there and if you look you'll see very carefully you'll if you look carefully you'll see it basically says you Etc which is the oldest POS that we've ever dug up from the ground this is from the 600 bcee from the mid first temple later first temple period and that's in saav iy as well and what's also fascinating is in the Dead Sea Scrolls I brought you from the Dead Sea Scrolls at the bottom here so the Dead Sea Scrolls were written between the 2 century bcee and the the the Roman destruction of of Israel those 200 years what scripts were people using then well a bit of a mixture saf iy was going out of fashion and kavuri second temple is really what they were writing in so it's no surprise to see that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in the modern day script that we have today a slightly maybe different style of the font but it's in the modern script here's an extract from saim that we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and you'll see on the last line from from is written like the rest of it in but k v is written in so you have a manuscript which is basically written in the current script but when they got to sh hasem they wrote it in the in the ancient script why now it could go in either direction it could be because it's like us writing Hashem with a hey meaning maybe they were writing it maybe they were kids writing this out maybe they were writing it for non- codish use to to read and they didn't want to write hashem's name so they wrote it in because doesn't have any Kusha or maybe it's the opposite I sat with RAB liag few days ago when I discussed it with him and he felt that the other thesis was better that that's the holy holy holy yeah that was the original on the and therefore when they got to Shem they put it into it's hard to know exactly what the reason was but certainly we found this in modern day Hebrew if you write sham Hashem in I does that have K kadha or doesn't have Kusa I didn't find a lot of uh material on that I saw one commentary on the ramom that said he didn't have kadha but uh that's something you can ask your local Orthodox Rabbi when you're in you about to write some iy so I just thought I'd bring you this because I think it's quite technical but I think it's really fascinating it goes to a lot of the issues like I said of cabala and and similar things that we have today um but I think it's worth teaching yourself kav I yeah that's my name inav I AB Manning yeah that's my name yeah so AB Manning yeah that's bet okay so what and actually it doesn't take as long as you think once you start getting into it you can download the fonts everything's available and then you can become like a an authentic Sav if Jew and see what you make about about okay next week something completely different bem in advance of yans have a great week