tzaadi

The ‘W’ resembles the Hebrew letter Shin, the first letter in Shaddai, the Hebrew name of G-d as Protector. Thus the ritual saying of this prayer echoes the priestly responsibility to channel the protective power of G-d to the people.

Hebrew Shin

If the blessing’s hand placement looks the least bit familiar, it should. Try this on for size:

Vulcan Hand Salute

Leonard Nimoy, who was raised in a traditional Jewish home, used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the Vulcan Hand Salute for his character, Mr. Spock. He explains that while attending Orthodox services as a child, he saw the gesture. Many years later, when introducing the character of Mr. Spock, he and series creator Gene Roddenberry thought a physical component should accompany the verbal “Live long and prosper” greeting. The Jewish priestly gesture looked sufficiently alien and mysterious, and thus television and science fiction history was made.

"> NPR website. No matter what I was doing on Fridays, I found time to listen in on him to get my weekly fix. Some of those sessions hold a prominent place in memory, continuing to inspire. For me, the older the origin, the truer the meaning. Discovering the origins of a word is like archeology or time-travel. However, I don’t ‘need no’ fedora like Indiana Jones or an imagination like H.G. Wells, just pajamas (where does that come from?…oh it’s Persian!), a fast Net connection and Wikipedia, Google or the OED online (Oxford English Dictionary). By the way the word ‘fedora’ comes from ‘Fédora’, a popular French play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) that opened in 1882. The heroine, a Russian princess named Fédora Romanoff, was originally performed by Sarah Bernhardt, actress and notorious cross-dresser.

Here are a few discoveries:

Copacetic, (or copasetic or sometimes, as in Black vernacular, ‘copastetic’) meaning ‘very acceptable’, ‘just fine’. ‘Everything is copacetic’.

According to Ciardi, copacetic originates in the Hebrew phrase ‘(ha) kol beseder’, (literally ‘all in [the] order’) meaning ‘everything is alright’. The Seder or ‘order’ is the ritualistic retelling of the Exodus annually for Pesach (Passover).

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Ignite, meaning to ’set on fire’. Virtually every dictionary will tell you that ignite and its derivations originate in the Latin ‘ignis’ or ‘fire’.

However it actually comes from PIE or the Proto-Indo-European language and cultures associated with it. The root of ignite emerges from the Vedic culture of India, thousands of years older than Rome. In the Indian classical language, Sanskrit, ‘agni’ or ‘fire’ is both a noun and a deity. Agni is the god of fire, lightning and the sun.

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Lufthansa, the German airline, is a combination of two words from the Sanskrit, ‘lupth’ meaning ‘air’ or ‘invisible’ (‘luft’ is ‘air’ in German) and ‘hansa’ meaning ’swan’. When the air service first started, the aircraft they employed were pure white, resembling huge white swans as they disappeared into the distance.

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Abracadabra (sometimes spelled Abrakadabra) is a word used as an incantation or theatrically by stage magicians.

The original Hebrew and later Aramaic was either ‘avda kedavra’, which means, “what was said has been done,” or ‘avra kedavra’, which means “what was said has come to pass.” Over time, it was corrupted to its current pronunciation with the replacement of both “v” sounds with “b” sounds (b and v can be interchangeable in Aramaic).

More recently, it was an incantation to be used as a cure for fevers and inflammations. The first known European mention was in the 2nd century CE (Common Era) in a poem called ‘De Medicina Praecepta’ by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of an inverted cone.

Of late, we hear ‘Avra Kedavra’ in the Harry Potter series of books as a killing curse, but this is a gross debasement of its original intent. The original Hebrew ‘avara kedavara’, in a religious context, describes the matter-producing, life-giving utterance of G-d that created the Universe.

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We are inundated with words of African origins, but true to form, etymologists that study the roots of Indo-European languages typically overlook them, assuming that little of African origin is of real substance. So we are left with commodity words like banjo (Bantu), banana (Wolof), coffee (Amharic), jazz (Mandinke), jamboree (Swahili), mojo (Fulani), okra (Igbo) and many others.

In my research, I found one extraordinary African concept marginalized to a criminal degree. Before being sullied by Europeans, the word nigger (originally pronounced ‘en-jer’) was revered as the ‘divine epithet’ of the ancient Egyptians, who called themselves Kemites and their land ‘Kemet’, the ‘Black Land’ or ‘Ta-Merri’, the ‘Beloved Land’. N-G-R (‘en-jer’), a word without vowels like many classical languages such as ancient Egyptian or biblical Hebrew, was the word for G-d. In Kemetic society, the word for ‘nature’ which is interchangeable with deity, was ‘N-Y-T-R’ (‘net-jer’). Pronounce ‘net-jer’ then ‘nigger’ and one hears a clear, but problematic connection.

In many African languages particularly the Niger-Congo language family, words that connect with people, gods and groups often begin with ‘n’. For instance, the word ‘Nkosi’ in Xhosa (South Africa) is ‘god’. The word ‘Ndaba’ in Zulu (South Africa) is ‘council or gathering of elders’. ‘Negus’ in Amharic (Ethiopia) is ‘emperor’.

In this context, the study of word origins becomes significant. By knowing who I am, racist remarks and racial epithets become impotent. Every time someone uses ‘nigger’ to refer to a Black person, they are actually calling that person ‘god’.

Teach this to your children. It makes a difference.

"> Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, concedes that these outcomes are not inevitable and will depend on the actions of world leaders. I say that it depends more on the actions of ordinary citizens like you and me.

The preeminence we enjoy as Americans is neither a divine right nor a gift. We earned it. We became a great nation because our great grandparents, grandparents and parents answered the call and accomplished what no nation had done before.

Now the call is upon us again, but the landscape is very different. China and India both are hungrier for preeminence than we are. And, based on sheer numbers alone, their opportunities for success are greater. For example, China graduates 250,000 engineers a year, compared with 50,000 in the U.S. To recharge our dwindling lead, we must educate ourselves better than they do. We must create new opportunities for this great nation and KEEP those opportunities HERE rather than selling them to our national competition.

I have a very small job with UPS, currently the greatest shipping company on the planet. Every night I see the results of exported American technology when planeloads of PCs built with our manufacturing, design and software know-how arrive here in Louisville. Dell and H-P ship tens of thousands of their products daily from China. In my two years at UPS Freight, I’ve watched the volume of imports from Asia and Latin America increase significantly. During that time, our American shipping volume has remained essentially flat. America is producing less at home, opting instead to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and relocate them to Mexico or China.

In this context, I see in this report my opportunity to do something about guaranteeing American preeminence. I can provide superior service to my customers. If given the opportunity to ship early, I can take it. When a shipment is due tomorrow and we still have the opportunity to make flight or truck it, I can take it…even if it means exhorting my employees to stay a few more minutes. And why? Not because FedEx has its Louisville operations down the street. It’s because I know that there is a younger person in China, with more energy and better grades, who has to make the same decision.

Now is the time to demonstrate that we are the greatest nation in the world. We have much work to do. As a nation, we have to become hungrier, leaner and more competitive. As a necessary first step, we must become less divisive and learn again to be a nation.

Next, take nothing for granted. Asian economies are strong and growing partly because workers there realize there is always someone waiting in line for the opportunity to replace them. Unfortunately, we too often assume that our livelihoods and current national preeminence is a birthright. Wrong.

Finally, replace rhetoric with action. We can no longer afford to sit back and tell each other how great America is. That lip service falls on deaf ears in Asia anyway. Regardless of predicted trends of waning American influence, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Whatever work that is, do your very best. It has implications that are greater than yourself…it has the potential of keeping our nation great.

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