Monday, March 05, 2007

HATZOlAH

"HATZOlAH" is Hebrew for "rescue" or "relief", which is quite appropriate for this fine first example of a transliterated misplaced lowercase L! It concerns me that, in the unlikely event of an emergency at the Young Israel shul on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, confused congregants may see this as the phone number for "Hatzoiah" and not call. I could have corrected the sign with a pen, but that would have gone against the lowercase L Prime Directive, which "forbids any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept completely secret." Also it was Shabbat, and writing is prohibited on Shabbat. (I did come back after Shabbat to take the photo, but I forgot a pen, and even if I had a pen, remember: Prime Directive)

Besides the lowercase L offense, look at the bigger picture. "WHATS HAPPENING?" with this bulletin board? It's missing the apostrophe in "WHATS", that's what's happening! And for some strange reason, the uppercase I is dotted, as if it may have been confused for a lowercase L, even though it was fine without the dot. Maybe that dot was supposed to be the apostrophe in WHATS.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What are the hebrew words for sloppy and lazy?

Anonymous said...

A one centimeter omission spawns a 200 word essay. Hah! tzo laugh!