Author: Henok Elias

Don’t Let Your Tongue Die

Posted on by Henok Elias

By: Henok Elias

Ferenj: What was that language you were speaking with your mom? It wasn’t English.

Me: Amharic.

Ferenj: Oh! You speak what Jesus spoke. That’s so interesting!

Me: *smh* No. I speak Amharic, not Aramaic.

I doubt I’m alone in having this archetypal and terse conversation. Especially, for a year or so after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ boldly premiered in Aramaic on the monoglot shores of the United States. Tomes can be written, and I am sure at least one has been, about the many relationships betwixt the Aramaic tongue and Habesha culture. This is not the space for that. Instead, this is a warning to any Habesha who loves the 80 plus languages of their region and has harbored thoughts of preserving them. But, I will treat you with a few connections between Habesha culture and Aramaic before you press the button that sends you to The Atlantic article about the preservation or lack thereof Aramaic.

  1. 9 Aramaic speaking saints fleeing persecution from Byzantium are credited with the translation of oodles of literature into Ge’ez
  2. Aramaic is the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church, which is in full communion with the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox communities
  3. Words you might have thought were native to Amharic, like arb (Friday) and qurban (sacrifice/communion), come from Aramaic
  4. Aramaic, like Ge’ez, Tigre, Tigrinya, Guragigna, Arabic, and Hebrew, is part of the Semitic family

Decline of a Lingua Franca: The Story of Aramaic.

Have You Seen DOPE?

Posted on by Henok Elias

I watched Dope without subjecting my eyes to a single trailer beforehand. All I knew about the movie was that it had young people of color, and the poster – that I peeped sundry times in my periphery whilst whipping around LA – was visually voluptuous. The way people tend to define SPOILER ALERT is different. If you are worried, STOP READING HERE and go watch Dope.

The film starts with etymology. Brilliant. Alert Los Angelinos shout “heeeeeeey” when they watch movies and see Randy’s Donuts, palm trees, or UCLA’s libraries. Dope digs deeper. You get to see the Inglewood Courthouse (where I help cats settle their lawsuits), the cinema turned church on Broadway in downtown, and Grant High School in the Valley. If you and “the internets” know each other, then you’ve known about memes since 2004 on 4chan’s /b/. Toasty, I broke the first rule. And you lost the game. Now, eleven years later, Dope is teaching the A, B, Cs and ha, hu, hees of making a meme go viral. Watch out for Lily. She’s Molly’s homie. Bitcoin. This movie is relevant. Learn a smidgen about Bitcoin (there are other anti-authoritarian digital currencies) and you can do your own research later.

Dope is a riot. At the same time, the comedy stretches your cheeks as wide as the Cheshire cat’s cheeks, the terse cuts and action sequences remind you of Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and every Jason Statham movie ever. Habeshas that want to preserve their culture should follow Dope’s lead, by crafting creative projects that unabashedly tell their stories. I can’t resist the low-hanging fruit, Dope is dope – it has my cosign, does it have yours?

By: Henok.

Response to the Strife from the Mediterranean Sea, South Africa and Libya

Posted on by Henok Elias

The following assumes you care about humanity, if you do not, this is not for you…

I am an unapologetic child of hip-hop. This means my lips ooze with prize bars, from emcees that please these ears and eyes of mine freely granted to me by the divine man born in Bethlehem. Word is bond.*

this is the difference between emceeing and rapping, rappers spit rhymes that are mostly illegal, emcees spit rhymes to uplift they people -KRSONE

I mention this to introduce the heavenly wisdom found in the music of my favorite emcee, Immortal Technique. Not everything he says is in line with my faith, but he says and does more good than bad. I invite you to hear the text.

Here’s a toast to the dead… for those who died hard in the streets, soaking in red… for my enemies that are gone, I’m not a coward, so celebrating that would be wrong, I pray to God that your soul will come back again, so I can see you in the next life and finish it then, a toast to the dead, for criminals burning in Hell [sic], I wonder how many presidents are burning as well? emperors, popes, senators, generals? amputees feel unlucky until they see the vegetables… JDilla’s still alive as long as his music is, a toast to the dead… for those that’ll die today, the victims and those exonerated by DNA, the only thing worse than giving freedom to the guilty is killing the innocent and leaving your soul filthy, Immortal Technique, remember me when I’m gone, I encrypted my lyrics to stay alive in a song, so you’ll always keep a piece of my spirit inside, when you struggle to complete what I started before I died… realize that we are one regardless of our birthplace!

Exegesis:

-we should appreciate the dead, friend and foe alike

-we should be wary of power and authority

-without saying #1stworldproblems , which assumes 3rd world denizens can’t have trifling concerns, we should put our current woes (not Drake’s woes from the 6) behind us, and others in front of us

-when our flesh is eaten by the terrestrial worms, our ideas and words will remain, think of the permanence of our information brought by this digital age and act accordingly

-the written form is an effective way and has been so for thousands of years, to keep living (to be immortal)

-Immortal Technique leaves instructions, in his songs, on how he wants us to behave

-the behavior he seeks us to emulate the most is the behavior of being one, he wants us united

Background:

Certain South African denizens, who consider themselves more indigenous than other South African denizens, have beaten and killed people. Hundreds of people, pressured by groups of goons with guns (nation-States), have perished in the Mediterranean Sea, from poorly prepared travel arrangements. 30 Ethiopians were publicly put to death in Libya, by men too ashamed to show their faces, for the sake of a low-income homeless 1st Century Jewish Palestinian man, born of a poor teenage virgin in Bethlehem,** given the death sentence by the State, and married to communities of peoples across oceans, continents and generations, who call and have called upon his name.

Analysis:

Daesh (ISIS) does not appreciate other Muslims, let alone people who are not in Islam. We should appreciate everyone – the living and the dead. There are myriad causes, but the main cause of the shipwreck, the intra-African beef, and the executions is the power and authority vested in rulers by We The People. Let us take responsibility and cede power cautiously.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. -Lord Acton

All the people who perished in these three events were migrants. Let us have ears that hear the voices of all migrants, hands that help all migrants and wallets that abet all migrants. The way that we dress, the one night stands that we have had, the cars that we drive, the places we travel to, the moistness of our jumpers (bball), the expensive foods we consume, the movies we watch et cetera, have a common denominator. They are all fleeting. What matters? The way we treat each other.

let’s change the way we live, let’s change the way we treat each other -2Pac

All of the writing that you have done on this subject, whether in your diary, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook or in long-form like this, matters. Keep doing it. It is good.

Lisane Ge’ez is the root of many Ethiopian languages. Amharic is one of them. Lisane Ge’ez means “the tongue of the free peoples”. I identify as Ge’ez before Habesha, Ethiopian or any “tribes” my parents are from. To be Ge’ez is to be free. If we are free peoples (plural), then we are one in that we are free, but we are not boring because we are diverse. In Amharic (the 2nd most widely spoken Semitic tongue in the world) menfes (spirit), nefs (soul), istinfas (breath) and nefas (wind) share the same root. Though they are diverse, they are one. All of these words have to do with movement.

What moved Jemal Rahman? I would argue the question should be, who moved Jemal Rahman? I’m still not certain whether the martyrs were 28 or 30. Some people assume they were all Orthodox Christians. That’s a safe bet, normally, because that is the majority group in Ethiopia. However, Jemal Rahman, if you haven’t guessed from his name, is Muslim. Then why did Daesh put him to death with the Christians? Whatever, or whoever, influenced Jemal, he moved to be one with his diverse brethren. There was another martyr who undefined categories/borders we build. His name is Eeyasu YikuneAmlak and he had dreadlocks. Would you have expected Eeyasu, with his dreadlocks, to be so religious that he wanted to die for it? These were diverse people and maybe one or more of the martyrs will turn out to be Protestant. Maybe, one or more of them were Atheist, but reinvigorated into the faith that they were raised in, by a feeling of oneness grounded in the resurrection of that Jewish Palestinian I mentioned earlier. Who knows? God knows.

Conclusion:

We establish too many borders. Market anarchists call State borders “boarder Apartheid”. I like that. The metaphor is especially powerful given the current circumstances of bigotry in South Africa. But, there are so many other functional borders in our lives that we could live without. We establish borders because of height, weight, gender, religion, sexual orientation, time zones, area codes, flags, sports teams, culinary delights, hair texture, hair length, speed, strength, virility, fertility, skin tone, academic degrees, jobs et cetera. It is on us to change our behavior.

It is on us to jettison borders, and act like we are – one.

Peace be unto you all,

Heynok Elyas Negash Aweqe

Post Scriptum:

*RZA has been trying to get people to say bong-bong and word is bond for ages

**Bethlehem means the house of bread or the house of the word of God

the scriptural response (1500 words) – http://servetheway.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-orthodox-response-to-30-martyrs-of.html

the song response (2 minutes 29 seconds) in Ge’ez, English & Amharic – https://soundcloud.com/the-devoted-man/the-cross-is-our-atonemoment 

2nd song response (1 minute 58 seconds) in English alone – https://soundcloud.com/the-devoted-man/salvation-to-our-god-original

the video response (12 minutes 15 seconds) in English with a drizzling of Amharic/Ge’ez – http://youtu.be/Hv8PwN4F6-8

the commercial/fundraising response – for the homeless and the needy in honor of the 30 Martyrs – http://teespring.com/semaitat.

Historic Premier of an English Hymn in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Posted on by Henok Elias

        The words መዝሙር (mezmur), ማኅሌት (mahilayt) and ዘፈን (zefen) deserve their own post so that we can look at their intricacies, nuances and contexts with as much attention and focus as is humanly possible. This is not that post. Excuse the extra-ness and superfluity, I’m a Semite. In case you were not celebrating ጥምቀተ ክርስቶስ* in Los Angeles, CA last month, let me tell you what happened. We made history. I say we, because I am disclosing to you that I was the Master of Ceremonies/Mic Controller and teacher at the English language Orthodox Christian conference, within the larger conference hosted by Virgin Mary’s Orthodox Church, that debuted this English hymn (mezmur) to the world. Kudos to ዘማሪት ዘርፌ ከበደ (Gospel Singer Zerfey Kebede) for being the first professional Ethiopian Orthodox Gospel Singer to publicly sing a hymn in the English language. The British Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church in Australia and people of Caribbean descent in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of New Jersey, all of whom are in communion with peoples of Ethiopian descent in the entire Ethiopian Orthodox Church, have been chanting in English for years, but Zerfey’s English hymn is still a milestone for the Ethiopian Orthodox community writ large. She has a forthcoming English album – historians jot your notes now. Don’t sleep.

When our hearts are broken and our eyes are open, we see some, if not all, the good that girdles us.

I am Redeemed – Gospel Singer Zerfey Kebede

Post Scriptum:

*Ttimqete Kristos/The Baptism of Jesus Christ of Nazareth/Epiphany/Theophany.

16 Crypto-techniques for Habeshas

Posted on by Henok Elias

Eritrea is called the black North Korea for how much liberty the regime permits the people. The Ethiopian regime’s track record has the coffee stains of journalists and bloggers kidnapped for their thoughts. Don’t feel special. The diaspora, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, is no better off. The difference in liberty that we have in the U.S. and the U.K. is a difference in degree and not in kind. The gutsy folks at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, work with information sharers like Eric Snowden to tell us that our phones, computers and indeed all devices that connect to the internet are not safe from the prying eye of Sauron. Interface designer, Bitcoin lover, security enthusiast, electronic tinkerer and writer Chris Robinson wants to empower you to be safe. If a robber on the street aims her gun at you, there are physical ways of protecting yourself. You have a digital gun pointed at you. Robinson has 16 Things You Can Do Right Now To Protect Your Privacy.

Follow the link below to be empowered.

NODE.

Information for Everyone

Posted on by Henok Elias

Our neighbors in Kenya are developing open source technology to liberalize as much information as is humanly possible. Any innovations they arrive at will be shared with the entire global community. Ubuntu Linux, and indeed all open-source projects, can help Africans to help Africans. Funding indigenous grassroots networks is the way to the long-term growth that people say they are for. If you are not able to help them financially, help them by spreading the word. Have conversations about information sharing, and what can be done to help mama Africa.

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Biblical Mistranslations

Posted on by Henok Elias

By: Alemayehu Bahta

Have you ever heard an Ethiopian say “dance and music is a sin”? When you ask the person “why”, the often quoted scripture verse is one of the three, Romans 13:13, Galatians 5:21, 1 Peter 4:3. Well I was curious to see how this verse looked in the original Greek and also in other sister languages and the results have been shocking.

Here are the Amharic verses as printed in the popular 1980 edition.*

በቀን እንደምንሆን በአገባብ እንመላለስ፤ በዘፈንና በስካር አይሁን፥ በዝሙትና በመዳራት አይሁን፥ በክርክርና በቅናት አይሁን፤ (ሮሜ 13፡13)

መለያየት፥ መናፍቅነት፥ ምቀኝነት፥ መግደል፥ ስካር፥ ዘፋኝነት፥ ይህንም የሚመስል ነው። አስቀድሜም እንዳልሁ፥ እንደዚህ ያሉትን የሚያደርጉ የእግዚአብሔርን መንግሥት አይወርሱም። (ገላትያ 5፡21)

የአሕዛብን ፈቃድ ያደረጋችሁበት በመዳራትና በሥጋ ምኞትም በስካርም በዘፈንም ያለ ልክም በመጠጣት ነውርም ባለበት በጣዖት ማምለክ የተመላለሳችሁበት ያለፈው ዘመን ይበቃልና። (1 ጴጥሮስ 4፡3)

It appears that Paul was clearly not a fan of dance or music, but further investigation proved otherwise. The first step was to look to an older translation of the Amharic bible so that a comparison could be made. In the 1879 translation of these texts, the translator rendered the words similarly as well except in Galatians where the term was መሶልሶ (I still cannot find the meaning of this word).

Since this did not answer my question, the next step was to look to the Ge’ez text and interestingly enough besides Romans 13:13 which used a word that resembles dance/music (ማኅሌት) the other verses make no mention of dance/music instead the word is ስካር, which means drunkenness. So it is unclear where the words for dance/music were added into the conversation, unless the translators were consulting the Greek.

The Greek word in all three verses is κομός. The word komos has a deep tradition in ancient Greece. This word according to one source means:

“to 1) a revel, carousal  1a) a nocturnal and riotous procession of half drunken and  frolicsome fellows who after supper parade through the streets  with torches and music in honor of Bacchus or some other  deity, and sing and play before houses of male and female  friends; hence used generally of feasts and drinking parties  that are protracted till late at night and indulge in revelry.”

So it may be that the translators of the Amharic may have consulted the Greek and either a.) mistranslated or b.) lacked a better word for komos. All in all, this exercise points out three things, 1.) The Amharic translation must be redone from the original languages 2.) Historical context does matter and 3.) There is still a lack of scholarship on the Ge’ez and Amharic bibles.

Now whenever an Ethiopian, quoting from the 1962 Amharic Bible, tells me that dance and music are sinful, I respond with the statement “according to who’s translation?”

Post Scriptum:

*This translation, according to the introduction, was done in 1962 and reprinted in 1980 by Ethiopian scholars with financial assistance from the United bible Societies.

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Habesha History

Posted on by Henok Elias

Peoples from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and even the three States of Somalia have identified themselves as Abyssinian or Habesha. It is said that Abyssinian and Habesha mean mixed, but I find no evidence regarding the original meaning of this term convincing. Every category of identity is contentious, because identity is itself contentious, and diverse peoples and individuals want to work out their own identity with the utmost care.

The categories of Abyssinian and Habesha are no less contentious. We are witnesses to the contentiousness of identity in Raven Simone’s (from The Cosby Show and That’s So Raven) recent declaration of her ethnic and sexual identities before Oprah and the quick-to-indict denizens of social media whom are legion. Simone distances herself from the categories of black and gay, so that she can work out her own identity. It doesn’t make sense to say you have no identity, but I err on the side of giving her time and space to figure out where she thinks she belongs. The abuse she received is uncalled for. Settle down.

Ethiopia is a Hellenistic word that means burnt face, and Eritrea is a Hellenistic word that means red (for the Red Sea that it is adjacent to). A desire to be the people of the Book and colonial history respectively explains why these two African nation-States have European names. If you believe in the power of re-appropriating words, then you should approve of the pride with which Ethiopians and Eritreans wear these labels that have evidently derogatory origins. If you think re-appropriation is impossible, or unsavory, study the words queer and nigga closely and see if you hold your belief steadfastly.

The peoples, who have identified as Abyssinian and Habesha, across the eons, have spoken languages in the large branch of linguistics called Afro-Asiatic in the academic nomenclature. Semitic and Cushitic are sub-categories of Afro-Asiatic. Gih-ihz (Ethiopic), Tihgre, Tihgreennya (one of the official languages of Eritrea), Amharic (official language of Ethiopia) and the Guragay languages are Semitic. Afan Oromo (there are more native speakers of this language than Amharic), Afar and Somali are Cushitic.

In the Slate study of the most commonly spoken African languages in the U.S. (derived from U.S. Census statistics which I helped gather in 2010) Amharic is the number one tongue of 8 states of the union. Woohoo. They include California, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, South Dakota, West Virginia and Virginia. Amharic is the second most spoken Semitic tongue after Arabic. Notably, number three is Tihgreennya, and then finally is Hebrew. Now you tell me what it means to be anti-Semitic? Is it anti-Semitic to ignore the three groups of Semitic language speakers that are superlatively greater in number than the Hebrew speakers? To ask the question is to answer it.

7 states: Oregon, Minnesota, Alaska, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee and Maine tickle the sternum of my fancy in this study. For those of you wondering, that is not a pleasant feeling. The supposed most frequently spoken African language in these states is Cushitic. Cushitic is not a language. Now you see it. Cushitic is a branch of at least eight languages with over 55 million speakers. It disturbs my conscience that I have to say this in the 21st century – Africa is not a country and Cushitic is not a language.

Scandinavian

Ben Blatt posted the picture, but he is not to blame. The Census Bureau is a creature of the U.S. federal government (not to be conflated with the murk and mystery of the Black Lagoon), and this image is from their research. The U.S. federal government, the most overt enemy of diversity that the planet Earth has ever hosted, does not care enough about blacks to understand the nuances of their linguistic and ethnic diversity. As a Census employee (in 2010) I was mandated by the U.S. Federal Government to ask, “are you a Negro?” at each house visit that I made, and it was pretty much my sole task to make house visits.

I am thankful that this map is informative, but it should be more responsive to the communities it tracks. Note that the Scandinavian map lists languages and not branches of languages. There are roughly twenty million Scandinavian (North Germanic branch) speakers. That’s less than the amount of Afan Oromo speakers let alone Cushitic speakers as a whole. But, hey, how much is a black life worth?

Post Scriptum:
See more maps in this article..

F**k Cancer

Posted on by Henok Elias

Dr. Isaac Yonemoto has begun an intellectual blitzkrieg against everyone’s, except for entrenched corporations within the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex, favorite enemy, cancer.

Liberate Pharmaceuticals

Go to Twitter and search #firstworldproblems to see a list of worries that we tend to list. Perspective and context are everything. No body feels the pain of restricted access to, or outright prohibition of, life saving drugs more than the indigent of the Third and Fourth worlds. Most habeshas have firm roots, whom they call on Viber, WhatsApp and Skype, in the Third World. Few, if any, have roots in the Fourth World. To help as many people as is humanly possible, in all worlds, Dr. Isaac has made this campaign open-sourced, consensually crowd-sourced and patent-free.

Upset Big Pharma and help the poor by donating to his cause.

Liberate Pharmaceuticals.