This morning, Shabbat, while in the midst of prayer in shul, and for no particular reason, there suddenly entered my mind a totally irrelevant thought: How do you say 'harpoon' in Hebrew? The thought grew in my mind, when a second doubt entered it: Had I once known the Hebrew word and forgotten it, or had I never known it?
Restlessly, I turned to an American co-religionist and asked him what was the Hebrew for 'harpoon'? I guess that you don't have to imagine how he looked at me upon being asked such a question, especially in the middle of shabbat prayers in shul, but he eventually admitted that he did not know either.
After prayers had finished, on the way out of shul, my American friend and I asked a 'sabra', a native Israeli, for the correct word. "Tsil-tsal", he revealed to us. "L'Azazel", I thought to myself, "I've heard that word before." "But don't worry," our 'sabra' tried to reassure us that lack of knowledge of that particular word was not a comment on the level of our Hebrew, "I only use the word myself when I am actually whale-hunting."
After shabbat I found a Hebrew dictionary definition which defined "tsil-tsal" as "a spear tied to a rope, used for hunting large fish".
Sounds about right.
Which reminded me of another American, one I had known years earlier, on kibbutz. His Hebrew was so good and accentless, that he tried to pass himself off as an Israeli. But some youngsters had their doubts, and decided to test him. They figured that 'tadpole' was not a word that cropped up in everyday conversation, so that was their bait. In the guise of earnest seekers of knowledge they asked him what 'what do you call a frog in its earliest stage of development?' Of course, he did not know, and his 'cover' was blown.
('Tadpole' in Hebrew is 'roshan'; 'rosh meaning 'head', and the 'an' suffix being the diminutive form, probably because a tadpole looks as if it is chiefly composed of a head.)
OK, so far we've learned two new Hebrew words. How often can you fit them into day-to-day conversation? (Hint: 'Harpooning tadpoles' is not a likely subject for conversation, although it would probably be valid to say something like 'defeating telegramsam's arguments is like harpooning tadpoles'.)
And the last story, of which I was reminded by the first two (but please, don't ask me why), was in the pre-Google days when at a new job I was introduced for the first time to the Internet. "Think of two subjects, two items that will serve as an argument for a search, and watch the Internet locate all sources that contain both values," I was requested. For some reason I wanted to fail the search, so I took the two most impossibly connected subjects I could think of on the spot. "Circumcision and Mars", I said.
I recall that the Search Engine we used at that time was called "Northern Lights". It took it just a second to return with one or more sources - I just remember the first one: a website located in, of all places, Berlin, displayed a page from the Kabbalah in English, upon which appeared both the requested words - in two separate places, with no connection between the two.
Summary: we have learned two new Hebrew words, and discussed circumcision, Mars, Berlin and the Internet.
There is, as you may have guessed, no point at all to this post.
And that was my point.