I think I understand now why the U.K. is so anti-Zionist. It’s filled with morons who don’t even know what Hebrew looks like when they see it on a teen pop star’s side. The caption of the bigger picture (at the link):
Body art: Bieber showed off a new tattoo – a row of mysterious symbols under his left arm – in addition to the bird etching on his waistline
Yeah, it’s a mystery, all right. I’ve never seen those symbols before. Oh, wait. Yes I have. They’re yod, shin, vav, ayin. He’s deeply religious. Want to bet that’s how his particular group of Christians spells “Yeshua,” their Hebrew name for Jesus?
I know the Daily Mail isn’t the top drawer of British newspapers, but come on—”mysterious symbols”? How freaking ignorant are the Brits about Judaism, anyway?
Yeshua (I’m assuming there’s a “hei” unseen at the end.
Which means salvation. Or it’s a reference to Jesus, for that’s the Hebrew name that Jews for Jesus call him.
An interesting point is that originally it was yud shin vav without the ayin The King James and Shakespeare (for example) tranliterated and used the name as Jesu (without the s at the end). I was told that the Greeks (and Romans) added the s at the end to make it conform to the way that they normally spelled names. For example, they changed Judah to Judas.
There is a song, sung by the Clancy Brothers, Moses Ry-too-i-lai-ay, about a Jewish merchant who moved to Ireland and put his name up over the door of his shop in Hebrew, during a period when the British forbade by law the Irish to speak Gaelic. A very officious British policeman comes along, sees the sign, assumes it’s Gaelic, and drags the poor fellow into court.
Now the trial it came on and it lasted a week,
One judge said ’twas German, another ’twas Greek.
You’re Irish said the policeman but the man did say nay,
I was writing it Moses Ry-too-i-lai-ay.