Wednesday, March 21, 2012

"Kehilla Kedosha"... קייק

The Museum responded to my question! They say the koof koof (קייק) stands for "Kehilla Kedosha", which means "Holy Community".  I had never seen or heard this usage before, but Debbie found it on wikipedia, so it must be real :)

Back to Italy in 10 days - so excited.  No Venice this time; Rome instead!

"I'm an engineer, and if I could also dance, I would own the world."
Member of panel on "Science in Science Fiction"
WonderCon 2012

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Help

So, this is driving me crazy.  When I was in Venice for New Year's Eve (Capodanno a Venezia!!), we went to the ghetto and the Jewish Museum, on Friday afternoon just before it closed for Shabbat.  It was a lovely museum, interesting and carefully tended, but I saw one thing that utterly freaked me out.  On the walls of a display about the different communities of Jews in Italy, I swear it used the word "kike".  It was in Hebrew, as קייק, so I'm assuming that *doesn't* actually mean kike and is some other standard abbreviation for something legitimate... right?? Someone help me out here, because as far as I (and wikipedia) know, there is and never has been any non-derogatory meaning or use of this word.  And I wasn't dreaming it - here's a picture of the display from the Museum's own webpage:
Can anyone help me understand this? Please?