"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

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?

L'educazione, Seconda parte

Tonight's Italian movie was Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di ferragosto). Terrible.

Obsessed with this song:

Started Italian class the other day, and started listening to the very cute "Drive & Learn Italian" cds in my car last week. I remember having this Berlitz Hebrew tape when I was a kid and I thought it was such a good cultural lesson, in addition to language instruction, because the English speaker would say some polite thing in an upbeat-but-polite manner, "thank you very much!" and the Israeli would say, "ehh, toda raba, toda raba" like he'd rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, than saying thank you. So I'm having that experience again, but reversed: these Italian speakers are So. Happy. To. Speak. Italian. Every word is a jubilant song. Adorable.




Hey, today is 9/10/11. Cute, no?

Leggi.Danza.Beatitudine? Or; the Italian education of RDB, parte uno.

Two weeks ago, it was "The Tiger and the Snow" (La tigre e la neve). Last week, the sad sad "The Son's Room" (La stanza del figlio). Tonight, "Cinema Paradiso", which I immediately realized I had already seen but of course I couldn't remember a thing about it. Amazing how quickly movies leave my memory... books too, to be honest.

Listening to Italian music in the background pretty much all the time. So far, lots of Fabrizio De André - something about him feels comfortable, accessible. Is it a Shlomo-Artzi-ness?

Italian class starts next week. I can't wait. And as soon as I finish what I'm reading (The Rebbe's Army, oddly enough) I can read something Italian, or at least some good heart-breaking plot-driven fiction that takes place in Italy. Any recommendations?