Tag Archives: hebrew

A Family’s Lost Story Found, and the Sephardic Studies Initiative

By Guest PostJanuary 20, 2013Culture, Generalamerican life, arabic, arabic letters, auschwitz, autumn, benny, brother salomon, devin naar, during the war, esther, family story, grandfather, great uncle, Greece, hebrew, hebrew letters, historical archive, immigrant generation, islam, jewish community, jewish studies, jews expel, jews throughout europe, judeo spanish, judezmo, ladino language, ladino phrases, mediterranean basin, muslims, nazi occupation, nazis, northern greece, ottoman empire, port city, rabbi friend, rabbi solomon maimon, rosetta stone, salonica, script, seattle, sephardic jewish culture, sephardic jews, sephardic studies initiative, shelly, spain, spanish, third reich, thomson hall office, turkey, united states, washington university, world war

For Devin Naar, the Sephardic Studies Initiative is not just a valuable historical archive; it has also been a personal journey revealing an untold family story from the years of the Third Reich.

Naar’s part of the story began about 10 years ago, when as an undergraduate at Washington University he grew interested in the history of Turkey and Greece, which for centuries until World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire. His family comes from Salonica, a port city in Northern Greece. (more…)

Air Above Dead Sea Contains Very High Levels of Oxidized Mercury

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2010Environmentatmosphere, bromine, chlorine, daniel obrist, dead sea, fluorine, global ecosystems, halogens, hebrew, iodine, mercury, non-metal elements, oxidized mercury, polar regions, potent neurotoxin, sea of salt, yam ha-melah

*First such levels measured outside polar regions*

In Hebrew, the Dead Sea is called Yam ha-Melah, the “sea of salt.” Now measurements show that the sea’s salt has profound effects on the chemistry of the air above its surface.

The atmosphere over the Dead Sea, researchers have found, is laden with oxidized mercury. Some of the highest levels of oxidized mercury ever observed outside the polar regions exist there. (more…)