FUN WITH WORDS

I learned that the words that are encased in the little mezuzahs on the doorways of jewish homes start with "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one", which is Deuteronomy 6:4.

I learned the word "one" is, in hebrew, "echad', pronounced
"ay-hahd".

I learned that this word for "one" is different than another word in hebrew.

I learned that "echad" is a "plural singularity" , as "bunch" in a "bunch of grapes" is a plural singularity.

I like to play around with words. (I read a book named MOTHER TONGUE by a Berlitz about how words spread from one language to another. It was great.) So when I learned that the name of the first synagogue in New England or the American colonies meant "remnant" and sounded something like "shar", I thought, "Hey! I wonder if these English words are related to that word "shar". They sure sound like it.":
share--a portion
shire--a political or geographical division; an area.
sheriff--a leader or law-enforcer of an area
shard--a fragment of pottery or other stuff
sheer--something is cut
cher--in french, something precious. a remnant of a valued thing
would be precious
(shore is a division between water and dry land.)

I looked up those words and did not see that hebrew was credited with being the source of any of them.
Maybe that is because 1)they are not related; or 2) the hebrew words and the other language words have a common precursor; or 3) there may have been a vague, unspoken bias on the part of the makers of the dictionaries against crediting the jews with anything.

(I hate to let people know what some of my wacko ideas are; but I read that Jeremiah, who wrote JEREMIAH and LAMENTATIONS, and was taken captive to Egypt when Judah was defeated by Egypt et al. He may have made it to the British Isles at that time, and brought the Stone of Scone (the stone that Jacob laid his head on the night he had a dream about God) with him; and maybe some people, too. (Some folks that think that also hypothesize that Jeremiah was called Merlin. Merlin might indicate someone brought to a place by the sea, “mer”.) So that belief set the groundwork for me looking for hebrew words in english.)

While I was thinking about sheriff, my mind went to the sheriff of Nottingham, and then to Robinhood and his merry men.
I wondered if the robin part could be from Rabbi; and the hood part, from echad.

The dictionary says "-hood" means "a state" such as childhood is the state of being a child; motherhood is the state of being a mother; etc. The related foreign word "-hood" is thought to be related to is German "heit" meaning ????

But I wonder if these words instead express a group that one might be a part of. For example, A woman enters motherhood and becomes a member of the community of all mothers. That could be the mother group or "motherhood." And what about neighborhood, and brotherhood? Those definitely have to do with groups.

If I'm right, the suffix -hood is related to the hebrew word echad, and may have come from it.(It is so very ironic that the anti-semitic bias MAY HAVE led anglos to censor that tiny bit of history out of dictionaries having the consequence of robbing christians of a way to appeal to the jews- a discussion of God calling himself "echad".)

BUT THERE'S MORE! I was reading some of Karen Armstrong's stuff (THE HISTORY OF GOD) and she used the word "godhead."
That is a word that has always confused me. Of course, the concept of "Holy Trinity" is confusing anyway. Some would say that is an indication that it is an invalid view of God. Anyway, I looked up godhead in the dictionary and found out that it is that same "hood" word again; and it means "god group"- the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I can just imagine those monk scholars of the Middle Ages in their monastaries using that echad word to describe their understanding of that "God-group".

"Hood", we also know, means a covering that keeps things together. You could even say that a person's head is where all that neat stuff- brain, hearing organs and eyes- are, all contained inside that skull or “head”.

I also remember that one trend among jewish communities that's been publicized in recent years is the delineation of neighborhood or "household" boundaries for purposes of making Sabbath life a little simpler. I wonder what the name for that is.

Well, that's all of that for now. Oh? You haven't had enough yet? Well, I also wrote about "Punny God". But I'll save that for another time.