Learn Aramaic

By Kinda Jayoush Touma, her husband, and their three children preferred the risk of living in Maaloula to the pain of leaving home. Rana Touma and her three children were living in Damascus when they received a coffee mug with a picturesque image of Maaloula. Their eyes filled with tears because they feared they would never again see their hometown. In December 2013, armed rebel groups, including Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al Nusra, attacked Maaloula, an ancient Christian enclave. The town prided itself on being the last place on earth where people speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. For months to follow, clashes between rebel groups and government forces destroyed most of the town's historic homes, churches and monasteries. Rebels kidnapped 13 nuns and killed those who resisted. Residents were forced to flee their homes. In a country where Christians are perceived to be disappearing or under threat of attack, it raised questions about the community's very sur...

JISH, Israel, Nov 9 (Reuters) - In the green hills of the Galilee, where Jesus is said to have preached two thousand years ago, a group of Aramaic speakers looking to revive the language of Christ are celebrating a victory in their quest to safeguard their heritage. In a place where tensions run high on issues of ethnicity, faith and citizenship, members of the Christian sect have won the right to change their designation in the population registry from "Arab" to a newly-created ethnic classification: "Aramaic." The group that sought the change is small, a few hundred people at most, but their campaign is part of a larger debate on issues of identity in the Holy Land and Israel's treatment of its Arab minority. Supporters say Israel's agreement to allow the group to define itself as "Aramaic" is a sign of ethnic tolerance. But critics call it an attempt by the government to encourage splits within its Arab population, which largely defines...

The interior of the house of a Christian family in Jerusalem, ca. 1850.     Some of you may have been following the stories from Israel about a small group of Christian Arabs from the Galilee successfully petitioning the Israeli Ministry of Interior   to register them as “Aramaeans”   rather than Arabs. Led by a Greek Orthodox priest, Gabriel Nadaf, this same group has also been active in encouraging young Israeli Christian Arabs to volunteer for service in the Israeli army and has been vocal in its pro-Israel, anti-Arab sentiments. As a result, it has come under heavy fire from Israeli Arab politicians and some Israeli Christian church leaders, who have accused its members of being quislings. You may ask how serious all this can be. After all, Aramaic (or Syriac, as it also is called), though once dominant throughout the Middle East before being pushed out by Arabic, has not been spoken in the Galilee, or anywhere else in Israel, for centuries. (Although ...

The Center for Spiritual Living Morristown will present acclaimed Aramaic teacher Dale Allen Hoffman for two days of events at Center for Spiritual Living Morristown on Sunday, Nov. 2 and Monday, Nov. 3. The Center for Spiritual Living Morristown is located at 331 Mount Kemble Ave., Morristown. On Sunday, Nov. 2, from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Hoffman will present “ENANA: Living from the I Am” (two hours – $25 per person – includes 15 minute mid-workshop break) When Yeshua (Jesus) made statements such as "I Am the Way, and the Truth and the Life" or "I Am the Light of the world", was He speaking about Himself as the only path to salvation or was He actually referring to a Presence which rests quietly within each and every one of us? When viewed in His native ancient Aramaic language, the words "I Am" (Aramaic "Enana") translate directly into modern English as "I – I" or the "I within the I". Yeshua’s universal teachings come alive ...

Professor Shabo Talay leads a project that has received a 450,000 Euro grant to secure the future of the Aramaic language Turoyo. A DISAPPEARING LANGUAGE: The Turoyo language is mainly spoken by the Christian minority in parts of Syria and Turkey, but is threatened by exctinction due to emigration and armed conflict. Universities have united with a monastery to create the project Aramaic Online in order to help second and third generation immigrants in Europe to learn the language. The image shows an Aramaic inscription. In the modern world, the Aramaic languages are threatened by extinction. But with funding from the EU’s Erasmus programme the project Aramaic Online will provide future generations with an option of online training in  Turoyo. The world is full of languages such as Turoyo. Some of which will be gone only a few years from now, whereas other will hang on for maybe another generation or two before becoming extinct. But for languages such as Turoyo ther...

Christian Mosaic,Syria The siege of northern Iraq against the nation's ethnic and religious minorities by jihadist terror group Islamic State threatens to significantly alter the composition of the nation and write yet another chapter on genocide in human history. The threat is also a cultural one, however, as Islamic State terrorists kill hundreds of the last remaining speakers of Aramaic. The Islamic State's onslaught against minorities in Iraq escalated to unprecedented levels upon its seizure of Mosul, the second-largest city in the nation. There, they cleansed the city of its Christians, demanding the jiziya or "infidel's tax," their departure, or their lives. The Christians left, marking the first time since shortly after the life of Jesus that Mosul is devoid of Christian residents. Many of those Christians are Assyrians – indigenous Iraqis who speak a form of Aramaic. Aramaic is the language Jesus is presumed to have spoken by most historians, an...

A house in the Iraqi city of Mosul is tagged with the letter "Noon," the first letter of the word "Nasara," an Arabic term for Christians (photo: AFP/Newscom) By Rob Eshman http://www.jewishjournal.com When Jews are killed, we make sure the world knows. When Palestinians are killed, the Web explodes. So why is it that when Christians are murdered and persecuted en masse, no one seems to care -- not even other Christians? We see this mystery playing out in Iraq with the hundreds of thousands of members of Christian minorities whose deaths have not yet provoked an outcry. read more